How to deal with difficult people?

Friendly, welcoming, and good communicators are great people to converse with. They emotionally lift up people and if there is conflict or some other problem, it is easily worked through. Unfortunately the world isn’t filled with great communicators and is more dominated by difficult people. Dealing with difficult people is a must to be happy, successful, and develop fulfilling relationships. Here are list of tips for dealing with difficult people to transform their attitude and keep your relationship from declining:
Rights and Responsibility
It’s important to distinguish between rights and responsibilities when dealing with difficult people. Sometimes we feel obliged to work through difficult problems, solve their personality problems, or develop solutions beyond our capabilities. Other times we unnecessarily forgo our rights letting the difficult person trample over what they have no right to ruin.
Rights
· Any lawful problems such as abuse should never be accepted.
· If there are rules where you and the difficult person are having the problem such as in the workplace, then the rules should not be crossed. There can be rules in a family, amongst friends, or at a social venue. Rules are often implied rather then explicitly stated so it helps to mention them clearly to the person.
Responsibility
· Do not reciprocate the difficulties the person is giving. Treating them with respect is an important tip to deal with difficult people and is your responsibility.
· Listen to the difficult person and let them express their point of view. It will help you understand more about why they are difficult and this tip alone can be enough to deal with the person.
· To remain focused on the problem and not the person. Difficult people will usually have a difficult problem and your perception of them being difficult can be false. Disassociate the problem from the person is a great tip for dealing with a difficult person.
· You do not need to solve all problems on your own. Seek help from others as more hands make light work. Other people will bring more persuasive power in handling difficult people but beware of making a private problem public. It’s your responsibility to respect the other person but at the same time to request others’ help when necessary.
Stop Becoming a Victim
When dealing with difficult people it is a vital tip to stop feeling victimized by their behavior. Blaming them for making you feel miserable is only damaging to you and will not assist you in solving the problem. You give people access to your emotions so stop blaming them. Take responsibility for how you feel, stop blaming, and keep in focus the person’s difficulty is their problem. Eliminate feeling burdened by people’s problems. You’ll work towards a solution faster and it’ll be less emotionally exasperating when losing your victim mentality.
Being Apart of the Problem
“Take responsibility for how you feel, stops blaming, and keep in focus the person’s difficulty is their problem.”
If the person isn’t difficult to everyone then you could be contributing to the problem. Like the above tip, take responsibility and look at your weaknesses, mistakes, and improve on them.
Keep an Open Mind
When we see someone in a negative spotlight it can take a while to shift that negative understanding into a positive spotlight even when the person has not been difficult for sometime. Be forgiving by keeping an open mind as to why they are being difficult is a great tip. It helps you from jumping to conclusions and portraying the problem as the person’s difficulty. Perhaps you are the problem, their father was diagnosed with cancer, or they are in financial trouble. Acknowledge that you do not and will never know all the tidbits of information as to why they are being difficult. Keeping an open mind will prevent you from being dangerously judgmental.
Control Criticism
Feeling burdened by someone’s personality unleashes the damaging communication barrier of criticism. Criticizing people does not work towards conflict resolution. Minimize the criticism.
Behavioral Conditioning
Condition the difficult person’s behavior by rewarding the good and punishing/ignoring the bad. Say you have a manager who is rude to you and even other people. What you can do is let the other people know together it is possible to eliminate the difficult person’s behavior. Every time the manager compliments, encourages, or says something positive you can condition the manager to continually give a positive feedback when it’s due. Saying “thank you” and directly appreciating the positive feedback by saying “I much appreciate it when you give me good feedback” conditions the manager to give more emphasis on positivity. On the other side, when the manager yells or does other difficult behavior you wish to remove, you can ignore but directly address the manager stating you do not like the behavior and mention the effects it has on you. It rarely eliminates the behavior overnight because behavioral conditioning is about consistent reinforcements changing the behavior over time.
Walking Away
If all the above tips have failed it is probably best to walk away and leave the difficult person for another day or a later time. You are not giving up on resolving the conflict or ignoring future problems as you are recognizing that you haven’t been able to deal with the difficult person and another day can bring different possibilities. Emotions, thoughts, and attitudes change all the time and having some down time is often beneficial for your relationship. It gives time for people to think the problems through and cool down their emotions.
Dealing with difficult people is tough but following these tips will ensure you get on top of the problem. These tips are great for resolving conflict and can be adapted to solve when you are difficult to other people. Follow these tips for dealing with difficult people and you’re bound to make the difficult more manageable if it isn’t completely solved.