Tweet

Anger Solutions™ at Work: Dealing with Difficult People

Written by: Julie Christiansen

Article Overview: Let’s face it – if you’re not somebody’s difficult person today, you will be tomorrow. We all take turns being difficult for other people, just as they can be difficult for us. The difficulty comes from differences in personality, communication styles, personal preferences, and our expectations of how things “should” be. In this column, I offer some practical and simple techniques to de-escalate and win over the difficult people in your life.

Anger Solutions™ at Work: Dealing with Difficult People

Let’s face it – if you’re not somebody’s difficult person today, you will be tomorrow. We all take turns being difficult for other people, just as they can be difficult for us. The difficulty comes from differences in personality, communication styles, personal preferences, and our expectations of how things “should” be. In this column, I offer some practical and simple techniques to de-escalate and win over the difficult people in your life.

The first technique is helping others to calm down by monitor and managing your tone of voice. Speaking in a calm tone of voice, smiling and keeping your face relaxed, and maintaining eye contact are always to keep your difficult person from become more escalated emotionally.

Secondly, demonstrate you are listening with your non-verbal behaviours. If someone is venting his/her anger at you, attempt to show empathy. The key to this is to WAIT until the person has finished venting. When you interrupt the venting, the person will feel as though you are not listening, even if you have an answer for his/her problem.

Once s/he is finished venting, focus ONLY on the stated problem. Clarify what the problem is and what solutions s/he would like, if any. You can show empathy by saying, “I can see why you’re upset – I would be upset too…” This is also a good time to set boundaries around how you would like to be spoken to in future. For example, “I see why you’re upset – I would be upset too. In fact, you’re handling this pretty well. (This will encourage the person to begin calming down). In future though, I would really appreciate if you would approach me like… (State your expectations)”.

Next, provide helpful information/direction towards the answer. Respond with wording such as, “Let’s work together to come up with a solution for your problem. Or, “I understand what you want and why – let’s get working on it right away.”

Finally, if you don’t have the answers, refer the person to someone who does. Better still, go together – this shows that you are caring and supportive, and are willing to work with the individual to see his or her problem solved.

By demonstrating your listening skills as well as your willingness to show support even when your difficult person is in the throes of being difficult, you will win that individual’s loyalty and respect. Remember, it takes two to tango, and it takes at least two to fight. If you maintain a calm and supportive stance, your difficult person will have to come down to your level – there’s no place else to go!

Related Articles
  THE WAY WE SEE THE PROBLEM IS THE PROBLEM
  EQ Leadership Vital Sign The Power of Anger
  Ten Ways To Be Better At Dealing With Difficult People
  Fear of Anger - Yours and Others
  Anger Rising

Article Tags: anger, behaviours, boundaries, calm tone, communication styles, empathy, eye contact, good time, helping others, personal preferences, personality, tone of voice



Related Forum Posts
Re: Five Personality Traits of Successful Business Owners - 1. Focus 2. Ability to Adapt 3. Hard Work 4. Good planning 5. People Skills
Re: Website Name Help - Its good that you have come up with the idea of setting up a website for your business. Now As it is into Business Solutions, I would recommend that you also include this into the name of the website. This will help you getting better results as far as SEO is concerned. You can start building a brand with this name. As you have already got the name booked, you can try changing it to something on the lines of Business Solutions as in azimabusiness or azimabusinesssolutions. Its a long name but still is good from the SEO point.
Help me name my moms business - I think Infinity Cleaning Services sounds better than Elite Cleaning Solutions... Why the Solutions? What is there to be solved? You simply get a rag with some Windex on it and wipe away.... plug the vacuum and Vac Away, get a mop and mop away. Stick to Infinity Cleaning Services... ICS sounds cool...
Re: how many hours do you spend in here per day? - Difficult to say.... I'd say I'm here an average of 30 minutes a day.... there's only five folders that I read every day... others I only read if there's some interesting post title...
Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery: A Small Business - Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery: A Small Business Guide Donna R. Childs, Stefan Dietrich 2002 "Among the countless tragic lessons of 9/11, an overlooked but important discovery was the lack of preparedness among small and midsized businesses for responding to disaster. While most of the media attention was naturally devoted to...., the very existence of thousands of small businesses was determined by whether or not they had adequate insurance, sufficient technological support, and viable disaster contingency plans." (People who live in hurricane prone areas need this as well...and who knows when a fire might not strike...) Table of Contents 1. Preparation 2. Response 3. Recovery 4. SAmple IT Solutions Basic safety practices Okay, the TOC isn't [i:2fu76idt]too [/i:2fu76idt]helpful, but there's lots of valuable info in this book, as to ensure that [i:2fu76idt]your [/i:2fu76idt]losses won't be catastrophic. How people cope with suddenly seeing their homes and all their possessions gone, what kinds of insurance to get, etc. etc.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Setting Goals for your Home Based Business

What is an Adaptive Organization

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.