How To Deal With Difficult People: 6 Easy Rules
When dealing with difficult people, your reputation is also on the line. What you door say might affect your good name.
Your mental and emotional health may also be affected.
Here are some simple rules to keep in mind when you encounter difficult people.
1. Think before you act
Before you respond or do anything, give it a thought and try to predict the likely outcome of such a response.
In this way, you’ll be avoiding unpleasant situations. If you react abruptly without thinking, you may have to deal with the consequences that may arise.
You don’t want this burden. When you give a well thought our response, either verbally or by your actions you get that other person to think as well.
2. Keep your cool
In every situation, always keep your cool, no matter how bad the other person reacts; don’t let them get to your head.
Nobody has the power to control your temper unless you let them.
Keeping your cool disarms the other person since they would be looking for a confrontation and also enables you to think through the best course of action.
We have seen people lose their cool in a traffic situation and ending up doing something regrettable.
Sure there will be some challenging people who’ll stretch your patience but never lose your cool.
3. Don’t take it personally
When you encounter a difficult person always keep in mind that what they are expressing on the outside is just a reflection of their inner turmoil.
It’s not about you at all, it’s about them.
Someone might be going through a hard time in their life and are bound to get easily get triggered to anger.
The best you should do is to understand them and try helping them deal with the issue at hand in a different way.
When someone sees you care about them and empathize with them, they are bound to change their attitude towards you.
4. Search within
In some situations, a person gets difficult as a reaction to your attitude or behavior. So before you blame or judge, first check within to find out if your attitude is right.
This is something difficult to do as most people tend to think that they are not the problem. You might have offended someone even unintentionally.
If you find out you might be the cause of different attitude you are experiencing from those close to you, make it a point to resolve the issues.
When you do this in a timely manner, you avoid any buildup of bitterness and animosity.
5. Know your goal
In anything we do we have something we want to achieve, even in our conversations.
When you understand what your goal is, you rise above all other petty issues that are normally the cause of difficult interactions with others.
You won’t seek revenge, neither will you wish to cause any harm to another person.
6. Listen actively
Most of the arguments we have are brought about by lack of listening. If people employed active listening skills, most conflicts would be avoided.
Listen with the intention to understand rather than to respond.
Misunderstandings fuel conflicts which can make working with people very difficult.
Once you have understood what the other person means both by the verbal and nonverbal communication, you are in a good place to give an appropriate response.
You don’t have to agree with the other person, but understanding them goes a long way into improving relationships.
