Читать книгу Dealing with Difficult People - David Brown, David Brown - Страница 12

It is very easy to make superficial judgements about what to do with difficult people. But this can cause us to miss the root cause of the discord. Look at the details and consider each case individually.

Difficult people will take up a disproportionate amount of your time, so it is in your interests to invest time to get to the bottom of why they behave as they do. Suppose you feel that someone is a bully. You could try facing up to them, because, when confronted, bullies often do back down. That’s the superficial approach, though, and the case study below invites you to look under the skin of the difficult person before deciding on your strategy for dealing with them.

case study You need to be aware that someone could be difficult because of physical or mental health problems. It’s not your job to solve their problems, but it is your responsibility to be on the lookout for such contributory factors. An MD asked me to help design a performance management system. One of the issues that surfaced was that the Sales Director was seen to

Language discord

Another approach to understanding discord involves realizing that we have preferences regarding our thought processes and language. There are three different ways in which we show our language preferences:

• Visual. The visual type will say, “I see what you mean”, “Let’s look at this one more time” or “It’s quite clear to me”.

• Audio. The audio type will say, “Let’s talk about it”, “I’m speechless” or “Go and shout this from the rooftops”.

• Kinesthetic. This person is all about feeling. “I feel this is wrong for us”, “She’s a very warm-hearted person” or “I sense you don’t like this”.

The problem is that if you prefer one of these three, and the person in front of you prefers others, then you will have discord and a potentially difficult person. The answer is (a) for you to use a balanced blend of these styles, and (b) to match your style to those around you, where possible. So, if someone is regularly using kinesthetic/feeling words, use such words yourself.

Look what’s behind the behaviour before you decide how to respond

bully two of his staff with sustained and systematic ridicule. We explained the impact that he was having, and we faced the problem head on by warning the bully of the consequences of his actions. We did things by the book, but only by digging deeper did we discover that he was an alcoholic. We enlisted specialist help, and the problem was controlled.