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Effective Communication

Dealing with Difficult People

Dealing with Difficult People

Virtually every one of my clients over the years has brought up the subject of dealing with difficult people.  There’s no escaping the fact that they come into everyone’s life at one time or another.  Sometimes they come in the form of an unhappy or hard-to-get-along-with client, customer, or co-worker.  Sometimes they’re a person we report to or someone who reports to us.  And sometimes they’re just someone we happen to come in contact with like a store clerk.  Whoever they are, they can cause anxiety, frustration, concern, or anger in us and can even cause us to become like them – someone difficult to deal with.

Sometimes the best way to deal with a difficult person is to avoid them altogether – give them wide berth.  But often we don’t have that option.  The difficult person is someone we simply have to deal with.  Most people would say that in those situations, we have three options.  These options are: 1) Try to change ourselves, 2) Try to change the other person, and 3) Resolve to tolerate the situation – basically decide to put up with them.  I’d like to suggest that there’s a fourth, very effective option as well – perhaps the most effective of the four options.  Let’s spend some time discussing these four options.

1) Try to Change Ourselves
Your first instinct might be, “Why should I be the one to change?”  In fact, quite often you’ll find that to be an appropriate response!  Often, we are not the catalyst for their behavior.  But sometimes we are.  If you’ve ever had people in your life who cause you to become difficult or obstinate, then doesn’t it stand to reason that you may be causing that same reaction in someone?  It’s in situations like this that we have to examine our own behaviors and reflect on whether we’re the cause.  Frequently, we’re blind to our shortcomings.  We don’t see what we’re missing.  How do you find out whether you’re the cause of the other person’s difficult behavior?  Option 4 holds the answer.

2) Try to Change the Other Person
In Option 1 our initial response was to ask, “Why should I be the one to change?”  Our first reaction was one of justification.  Basically saying, “I’m not the one with the problem!”  Guess what happens when we ask the other person to change?  You got it.  They have the same reaction we would have had.  Everyone feels justified in their behavior.  No one intends to behave arbitrarily or irrationally.  We always have a reason for acting the way we do.  Attempting to force the other person to change just doesn’t work.  (Just ask any spouse!)  No one will change anything about themselves until and unless they choose to do so.  Option 4 holds the answer.

3) Decide to Put Up with Them
“Tolerate it.”  “Just deal with it.”  The only thing that accepting things the way they are accomplishes is to postpone a confrontation.  Although this course of action (or inaction) appears to avoid a confrontation, in fact it just pushes the confrontation down the road.  Even though this path is frequently taken, it has some far-reaching unhappy consequences.  It affects you, the other person, and your team.

You: You end up spending valuable energy by deciding to tolerate this person.  It takes energy to tolerate a poor situation – energy which you need for other, more positive and productive efforts.  In addition, by tolerating this person, your attitude suffers.  Although we decide to tolerate it, we don’t ignore it.  Tolerating something that reduces our level of energy and our attitude is a poor solution.

The Other Person: If you reflect back to a time when you became complacent, lost interest, and experienced a drop in attitude (as we all have at one time or another), you’ll find one of two reasons for this shift.  One reason is that the work you were doing really didn’t interest you – the work was unfulfilling.  The other reason is that we became disillusioned with someone or something.  In situations where the reality of the situation is different from the one we first imagined, is there a way to make things better?  Maybe.  Option 4 holds the answer.

Your Team: A leader sometimes tolerates a difficult person for an extended time, hoping they’ll “come around” and thereby avoid a confrontation.  Until something happens – some event or challenge – and they feel they have no choice but to confront and often terminate them.  After they’re gone, the leader is often surprised at the number of team members who come forth and comment on what a drag on the team that person had been.  They’ll speak up about their poor attitude or poor work ethic, and often add, “I don’t know why you kept them so long!”

When you don’t address a difficult person – when you decide to tolerate them – your whole team is affected.  In addition, ask yourself this:  When you keep a difficult person on your team, what does it say about you as a leader and what does it say about your values and your integrity?  Tolerating a difficult person doesn’t work in the long run.

4) Strive to Understand Them: The Key to Success
This option is about being an effective leader and being an effective communicator. It’s about being compassionate and strong at the same time.  It’s about being good for someone rather than being good to them.  It’s about understanding rather than telling.

This solution is about taking the time to understand the other person’s reasons for acting the way they do.  If you’re effective at this, you’ll be able to either help them change their perspective on things or, in the alternative, help them to move on to something that better suits them.  This solution is about helping people grow and maximize their talents.

How do you come to understand the reasons for their actions and their attitude?  Just ask.  Ask why they act the way they do.  Usually, they’ll be more than happy to tell you.  In truth, their behavior is a symptom rather than a problem.  Keep asking questions to get at the heart of the issue so you can either shift their perspective or help them move on.  Once you’re at the core issue (the underlying problem), you have the ability to make a difference in their life.  It’s amazing what can come out of a sincere desire to help.  How would you have felt if, at those times when you felt complacent with a poor attitude, someone took the time to listen to you and offer some other perspectives?  How would your life be different today if someone had helped you see yourself and/or your life differently?

As a leader, you have the ability to make a difference in someone’s life.

December 12, 2022 Filed Under: Effective Communication, Leadership


The Art of Persuasion

The Art of Persuasion

Mastering the art of persuading people is essential to achieving great results. As a leader, one of the main responsibilities is to develop sound strategies. But no matter how good a strategy is, the results gained will be proportional to the amount of buy-in people have for that strategy.

Over the years, I’ve seen many leaders resort to one of two approaches in an attempt to “persuade” people to get behind an idea. The first approach is to argue the facts to make their case. (This is especially popular with analytical people.) The thinking behind this is that if you present enough facts and do it with more passion, the other person will eventually come around to your way of thinking. Unfortunately, this approach rarely works. (I’ll explain why in a bit…)

The second approach leaders sometimes resort to is to use “the hammer”. By that, I mean that because the leader is in charge, they can always resort to saying, “We’re going to do it this way because I say so.” And because they’re the boss, everyone agrees to do it that way. The problem is that there is a big difference between compliance and commitment. The results achieved by a committed team are far greater than those gained by a team that is simply compliant.

The key to gaining buy-in for and commitment to an idea or strategy lies with understanding how people make buying decisions. Although many people think that decisions are made based on evaluating the facts and features, that’s not quite true. People buy emotionally. 

It’s not that facts and features don’t matter. They do. But the truth is that people buy a thing or an idea because of how they feel about it. Once they make that decision, they’ll use the facts and features to rationalize it.

Therefore, the key to persuading people and gaining buy-in is to shift their perspective so they feel yours is correct. The two most effective approaches for changing someone’s perspective are the use of questions and the use of analogies.

The Use of Questions

Asking the right questions can be extremely effective in persuading people. The key to asking the “right” questions is to be curious rather than to be challenging. Questions need to be worded and delivered in a manner that doesn’t cause the other person to become defensive.

As a simple example, consider two people see things differently. If one of them asks, “How can you say that?”, it would clearly put the other one on the defensive. In contrast, consider taking a curiosity approach by asking, “OK. Help me understand why you see it this way. Why do you think this will work?”

In doing that, they avoid challenging them and instead, asking them to better explain their position. One of two things will come of that. Either you’ll discover their approach has merit, or you’ll see where their thinking or judgment is flawed. Once you have that insight, you can either ask follow-up questions to gain more clarity or ask additional questions to shift how they see things.

The Use of Analogies

When you’re trying to shift someone’s view about a situation or an idea, analogies can be a powerful tool. Arguing your point by discussing the specific situation at hand usually causes people to defend their position. They’re emotionally invested in the outcome.

But when you use an analogy – an example from a different industry or different context – people can stay neutral to the story. Using an analogy that people can relate to evokes an emotional response – one that the two of you can usually agree on. Using the right analogy can make your point very effectively and instantly shift the other person’s perspective. It pays to master the art of storytelling.

The art of persuasion relates to emotions more than facts. By asking good questions and offering effective analogies, a leader can gain more influence within the organization and generate better results.

If you’d like help becoming more influential, please contact me.

October 10, 2022 Filed Under: Effective Communication, Employee Engagement, Leadership


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