Ursula Markham: How to Deal With Difficult People

To my family – with all my love

Cover Page

Title Page How to Deal with Difficult People Ursula Markham

Introduction Introduction Difficult people exist in all areas of our lives. They cause problems for anyone who comes into contact with them. This book is designed to help you understand and handle such people effectively and to get the best possible result out of any involvement with them. As a counsellor I spend a great deal of my time helping those who consult me on how to cope with and improve the situations that come about because of other people’s difficult attitudes and behaviour. As a business training provider I run seminars on dealing with difficult co-workers, superiors or subordinates. The ideas and techniques suggested in this book are based on the experience I have had in both these fields. They make a good starting-point if you find yourself having to cope with difficult people; you can then adapt these techniques to suit both your own personality and the particular problems you have to face – after all, no two situations are identical. Of one thing you can be confident: understanding what makes difficult people tick and learning how best to handle them will reduce your stress and make your life a great deal easier. All things are difficult before they are easy Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia no. 560

CHAPTER ONE Understanding Yourself and Others CHAPTER ONE Understanding Yourself and Others There is no way you can make difficult people change and suddenly become sweet and amenable. Such change can only take place when the individuals concerned desire it and work towards it. So, if you can’t change them , the only thing to do is to change your own reaction to them. After all, you are the one who gets hurt and upset while they themselves simply blunder on in their own way. All communication consists of reaction and counter-reaction. So, by changing your reactions – both inwardly and on the surface – you will in fact make these difficult people counter-react differently (even if only temporarily). Even if this does not help you to eliminate completely any problems that arise, it will diffuse most situations and therefore make them far easier to deal with. Sometimes you will have to be quite skilful in the way you handle difficult people. While you can let yourself go and shout at a brother or sister, you are likely to get into trouble if you react in the same way to your boss. Even with members of your family, however, shouting is not a very good way to handle trying situations – but at least you won’t lose your job! Each of us reacts in a different way to such awkward people because each of us has a different starting point. No two individuals have the same view of themselves; one may be calm and composed, another over-confident, while a third may have very low self-esteem. It is so easy to be hurt, deflated and demoralized by the words and actions of others; indeed, this is what they rely on and what gives them their power. But if you allow them to get to you, all you are doing is letting them win – and that is not good for you nor for their next unfortunate victim. The way to overcome the difficulties that arise is to be more clever than they are and to influence their responses – and often you can do this without them even realizing what you are doing.

CHAPTER TWO Styles of Behaviour CHAPTER TWO Styles of Behaviour The majority of people with whom you come into contact, whether in your business or personal life, will exhibit one of three general styles of behaviour: they will be (mainly) either aggressive, submissive or assertive. If you are to be able to deal with people you need to be able to recognize these styles of behaviour and be armed with methods of minimizing their negative effect. An important part of doing this is making sure that you yourself are in the ‘assertive’ category. Let’s have a look at the three basic types and see how to recognize them instantly:

CHAPTER THREE Types of Problem People CHAPTER THREE Types of Problem People Difficult people don’t just have an effect on you for the length of time you are with them – they can spoil your whole day, week or month. An encounter with an expert difficult person can leave you feeling angry (with yourself as well as with him), hurt or frustrated. And you can be sure that he knows this all too well. Such people rely on having this effect on others; they do it because they know it works and helps them to manipulate other people, thus leaving them to go ahead with things in their own sweet way. You have to realize one fact from the outset: you cannot change a difficult person just because you want to. With a few exceptions, difficult people are quite happy to be as they are. So, if you cannot change them, you need to learn a technique for dealing with them so that (i) you are not manipulated by them and (ii) you do not allow them to have a devastating effect on your own temper and behaviour. The types I am going to discuss here are those who are perpetually presenting problems. Of course you can be difficult and so can I – but hopefully this is only on occasion. To deal with really difficult people you need first to understand them and then to work out a method of coping with them and their behaviour while maintaining your own temper and sanity. This applies whether you encounter them in your business or your personal life. For the purposes of this chapter, I have divided difficult people into 13 basic types – although of course there will be others who fall somewhere between two personalities, exhibiting different behaviour according to the situation in which they find themselves.

CHAPTER FOUR Handling Conflict Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

CHAPTER FIVE Communicating Effectively Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

CHAPTER SIX Saying No Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.