Learn How to THRIVE Around Difficult People by Diagnosing Them!
By Guest Blogger Joy Huber
Since all women are crazy busy, for simplicity purposes, I break “difficult people” into two types. You have to know what type of difficult person you have on your hands FIRST before you can employ a strategy or ‘how-to’ in order to THRIVE around them and not let them get the best of you!
In the next paragraph begins an exact excerpt from Chapter 1 (What’s Attitude Got To Do With It?) of my ebook “You Go Girl: A Woman’s Guide on How to THRIVE Around Difficult People.” This quick-read ebook is designed to be conversational for easy readability with immediately implementable solutions to help women be more assertive, manage & resolve conflict professionally & personally, stress less, lower anxiety & worry and just plain WIN with the difficult people surrounding all of us!
So difficult people are sometimes just miserable people. And knowing that misery loves company, they decide to go out in the world and say, “I’m mis-er-able. I want everyone else to be miserable. How will I get them to join my pity party? Nobody seems to want to spiral downward with me and join me.”
They decide to simply go out in the world and just push some emotional buttons. They push your buttons. Do you know anybody that likes to push your buttons?
Of course you do! We all know the classic difficult person that likes to push your buttons. This could be your sister-in-law, this could be a friend, this could be your boss or this could be a co-worker. Basically what they do at work is come in and they might use you + a bad news statement.
You + a bad news statement automatically puts somebody on the defensive. It automatically backs them into a corner: You’re late again. You didn’t turn in the project on time. Personally: You forgot that today’s our anniversary. And it automatically makes the other person go, “Uh-oh. I feel like I must defend myself!” Because we’re humans, that good old human nature, that instinctive fight or flight, flee and remove myself from the situation response ends up coming out.
So these difficult people come into your space and they might deliver a you + a bad news statement. They might get close to you – physical proximity-wise – they might use their body language, they might throw their arms across their chest or they might point their finger at you as they are speaking. We will explore body language in communication later in this book!
But what are they trying to do? They are trying to elicit what I call an emotional reaction.
Now, as human beings we have a choice between cognitively responding to somebody (giving them a thought-based response) or whether we have an emotional reaction. Often when people use poor body language, increasing volume, negative voice tone, you + a bad news message, all of these things automatically trigger an emotional reaction!
So what do we do? They’re yelling at me – I might as well just raise my voice and yell right back at them! Right? We go right where they want us to go!
When we go right down this path that they want us to go down, I firmly believe that difficult person thinks, “Yeah! Whoo! Got another one!” And they might be singing the song, “Another one bites the dust. And another one down, and another one down (Remember the song?), whoo, next victim! Who else’s day can I go ruin because I’m just a difficult, miserable person?”
“He who angers you conquers you.”
Elizabeth Kenny
Now, that’s one type of difficult people you will encounter. Let’s talk about another type of difficult people because I also believe that a lot of people may not necessarily be intending to be difficult.
Have you ever considered that may-be people aren’t difficult – they’re just different than you and I?
This was a real epiphany for me when I first heard this idea or heard this concept! Years ago, working fresh out of college in the non-profit as well as the profit sectors, I remember I used to become so agitated. I would just literally take my power, hand it right over and just give it away to people that I perceived to be difficult. Sometimes I would let somebody ruin my day very early on – I would read an e-mail, I would hear a new voice mail, I would sit in a staff meeting or a meeting with volunteers – and then the rest of my day was ruined.
I had a throbbing headache by the time I got home in the evening. I’ve taken it out on loved ones. We can take it out on kids, friends, our spouse, our partner, our significant other; anyone you spend time with in the evening. You might say, “She made me mad!” “He ruined my day!” Now that I have been trained and now that I have the tools in my arsenal, I really do not believe there is any such thing as she made me mad or he ruined my day. I believe we let them make us mad. We let them ruin our day. We give in. We allow that person. We just basically take our power and hand it over and go, “Here you go. I know misery loves company and you’re just trying to push my buttons because you’re a miserable person. I’ll just hand my power over to you and then you can leave and be happy because I came in in a good mood this morning and now I’m in a terrible mood!”
But what else has dawned on me is that person may not necessarily be a miserable person who’s out to ruin your day. They could just be different from you.
What I mean by this is we need to remind ourselves there are different behavioral or different personality styles out there.
What type of “difficult person” are you trying to deal with – the type that’s difficult because they are miserable and misery loves company or the type you think is difficult, but really, they are just ‘different’ than you and it’s easy to label them as the difficult one? Once you decide this, this answer directs the strategy you take or how to be able to THRIVE around them in the future! This is very powerful information and it’s all detailed in “You Go Girl!”
Joy Huber – “Ms. En’Joy’able”
Author, Award-Winning Speaker & Business Communications Expert
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Get your ebook “You Go Girl: A Woman’s Guide on How to THRIVE Around Difficult People” at www.ManageDifficultPeopleNow.com. Make sure you sign-up at www.ManageDifficultPeopleNow.com for the FREE mini-course Joy is offering for NOW on the “12 Phrases Every Business Professional Must Know.” Contact Joy at Joy@ManageDifficultPeopleNow.com
Tags: Business Success, Communication, Personal Growth, Personal Success, Self Improvement
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