Dealing with Difficult People
May
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It might be an anonymous interaction, like when someone on the road cuts you off or won’t let you merge. It might be a stranger standing in line in front or behind you. It might be someone you know at work or even your boss. We are going to have situations when we are forced to interact with difficult people. People who are only concerned about themselves. But even worse because someone can be selfish, but still be polite. Some people don’t care how they treat you. Not just rude, but demeaning.
How do you react to people like this? How does it make you feel?
This can not only affect your work productivity, it can take an emotional toll on you. If you aren’t careful, it can crush your self-worth. This emotional impact can also have physical impacts. In her book, “Daring Greatly”, Brené Brown talks about how shame can affect people.
Shame is real pain. The importance of social acceptance and connection is reinforced by our brain chemistry, and the pain that results from social rejection and disconnection is real pain. In a 2011 study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, researchers found that, as far as the brain is concerned, physical pain and intense experiences of social rejection hurt in the same way. So when I define shame as an intensely “painful” experience, I’m not kidding. Neuroscience advances confirm what we’ve known all along: Emotions can hurt and cause pain.
As much as we would love to live in a world where bullies and selfishness don’t exist, that’s just not reality. We are going to end up having to deal with difficult people.
Emotional Merry-go-round
It’s not a matter of if we will have to deal with difficult people, but when difficult people will cross out paths. When it happens, we have various strategies we may try to use to respond to them.
Response 1
Do whatever you can to make the person happy. In public this could take many forms including letting someone cut in front of you in line, interrupt you while you are discussing something with store personnel, or take the last item off the shelf. At work this might mean dropping everything else to address the person’s demands. This can cause problems with all your other work that becomes delayed and doesn’t change their behavior. And now you end up with additional problems due to the other work not being completed.
Response 2
You shut down around them. They may be making a bad decision and you know what the impact will be, but you are too afraid to push back or suggest something different which ultimately ends in additional issues.
Response 3
If you have teams or work in other groups, you may push the unrealistic request on to others in the group or your team. This makes even more people stressed out and you become a surrogate bully.
Response 4
You take everything they say personally. You try to compartmentalize it, but it seeps into everything you do and think. You become filled with self-doubt, with feelings you aren’t good enough.
A Better Way
We first need to admit the old ways of addressing this won’t work. Everyone says that the best response for situations like this at work is - ‘just leave.’ Granted, it is the best course of action, to get our of the toxic environment, but sometimes you don’t have the luxury of leaving and that response doesn’t help address the difficult people you will cross paths with outside of work. So we need to talk through how to address this face on.
Start with your self-worth. Remind yourself that when someone is bullying you, that’s a reflection on them, not you. You need to remind yourself you have value, you are unique (the only you on the planet) and you are worthy.
Don’t allow them to shame you
Find your inner calm
Even if you made a mistake or failed at something, that doesn’t make you a failure as a person. Everyone makes mistakes and no one is perfect.
When a flower isn’t growing, it’s not the fault of the flower, but the environment.
Practice saying, ”not now.” When you allow a bully to monopolize your time, they win. Don’t let them control your schedule and play havoc on your priorities. Be prepared to defend your priorities. You’re not telling someone ‘no’ you’re saying you don’t have time now, but can look at their request at some point in the future. When they remain defiant and insist you should drop everything for them, tell them you can both go to your boss to determine what the priority should be. Be prepared to let you boss know the impact of changing tasks – what will be delayed or impacted and what other department so they can make the call.
What to do in public
What if the person is your boss and they like to ‘dump and run.’ They walk up, give you a new task and walk away quickly before you have a chance to respond. Sometimes critical things pop up unexpected, that’s business. But if it’s a repeated pattern, recognize when this happens.
If your boss has a habit of doing this, ask them to prioritize your work. Let them know the impact of switching tasks. “I’ll start this new task, but what I’m currently working on will be impacted and I won’t be able to continue on it until the new task is complete, so it’s going to be delayed.”
I had a boss that did this. I was working a critical priority and he sent an email that I needed to address something else immediately. I replied back and asked which of the two activities was the priority and he replied, “they both are.” I told him I couldn’t do them both and to focus on one would delay the other. He replied back that he understood and to do what I could. I told him my plan to finish the original task and then start the new one. The thing was, if I had simply started working on the new task, he would have hit me up later about the first one and would have gotten upset to find out it was delayed.
He wasn’t a bully, just singularly focused. I had to get him to recognize the impact and ramification of the bigger picture of the competing priorities. Not a difficult person, but the response is very similar.
If I had simply acquiesced to his demand, he would have ended upset that one of the other activities was unexpectedly delayed. I had to advocate for myself.
When you start to feel the pressure, practice deep breathing. Remind yourself you are worthy and have value. Everyone makes mistakes, no one is perfect and making a mistake doesn’t not make you a failure as a person
Defend your priorities. You may not like confrontation, but you can stand firm and say ‘not now’. And remember that avoiding a confrontation now to appease a bully doesn’t mean you won’t have confrontations later due to other missed deliverables.
The difference between advocating for yourself in public and being helpful by sacrificing for others.
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