HOW TO DEAL WITH DIFFICULT PEOPLE IN LIFE AND WORK - JOB - 2024

Surely you are dealing with difficult people at work, home, or elsewhere in your life and they are literally making your existence bitter. Sometimes it is easy for someone's behavior to affect us and have negative consequences at work and in general, in our state of mind.

In this article, I will teach you how to deal with difficult people in your life and work, deal with the situation, and become productive and happy again. The situation will not improve on its own, in fact, on many occasions it will get worse. Therefore, you must deal with the situation while you can maintain emotional control.

Below you will obtain some keys to face the situation and you will learn techniques to solve frequent situations.

7 Tips for Dealing with Difficult People

1- Do not give importance to non-influential people

Unless it is important to take action, do not worry about the behavior of someone who does not matter in your life and is not worth getting into arguments or fights.

Do not try to convince someone or change their negative behavior, as you will be wasting your time. If you can, keep a prudent distance from people who influence you negatively, in case you can't, you will have to take action.

The situations I refer to are: 1) when the negative influence is temporary (for example, someone who whistles at you because you started slow or a customer complains about anything), 2) if putting up with the other person's behavior gives benefits; for example someone you don't like on your team but who is very intelligent and brings good ideas.

In examples like these you will have to reflect on whether the situation is worth confronting and whether the other person's behavior is bearable.

2– Don't be reactive

If you are reactive, you will not handle the situation well and will act impulsively doing things that you will probably regret. Think carefully about what you will do to or say before doing it.

Take a deep breath or count to ten to relax, control yourself, and think carefully about the best way to act to get the results you want; think about pros and cons.

If you think you are out of control even if you have tried to relax or counted to ten, go to a place alone until you control yourself.

3- Don't take it personally

If you feel hurt by someone's behavior or words, try to see the situation differently. For example, you may think that your boss doesn't care about you or is very busy.

If you avoid taking other people's behavior personally, you can perceive their behavior more objectively.

Another way not to personalize is to put yourself in the shoes of other people: What would you do in their situation? For example: "it is normal that my partner does not have time from Monday to Friday, it must be very tiring to work 8 hours a day."

If someone behaves in a rude or violent way, it is no excuse, what I want to explain to you is that preventing you from taking it personally will avoid escalating the discussion / conflict and will make you take more reasonable solutions.

4- Focus on the task, not the personal

There are two kinds of conflicts, the task (work decisions, how to do a project, what color to choose for a marketing campaign…) and the personal (it focuses on the personal characteristics of the interlocutors).

It is proven that task conflict to a medium degree is positive for creativity, innovation and for the quality of the work done.

However, personal conflict is always negative and taking a professional problem at work to something personal will only escalate the conflict and it will be increasingly difficult to go back.

5- Communicate faith effectively

There are people who communicate violently, not only verbally but with their non-verbal language; eye movement, challenging stares, finger pointing, violent gestures, etc.

Surely you have come across people who misunderstand you, attack you, tell you a personal defect, or are excessively negative, always focusing on what is wrong.

The goal of these people's communication is control, rather than dealing with problems and solving them, making a collective decision. In these cases, don't play the other person's game and ask questions to make them aware of the repercussions of what they ask:

Person with violent communication: «this is not going to work, I think you are directing it very badly»

Answer: «Can you provide a solution?

Person with violent communication: "don't be silly, bring it up yourself."

Answer: if you keep treating me disrespectfully I won't keep working / talking to you, is that what you want?

Another technique for attacking comments is to reply with an unexpected and funny comment or change the subject:

Person with violent communication: «stop interfering, you are doing it fatal».

Answer: «good idea, so I can rest. You sign up"?

6- Use humor

Humor releases tension, disarms violent behavior, and shows that you have greater social skills.

You: Hi, how are you?

Partner (does not notice you).

You: uff I imagine, you have to be well concentrated (in a humorous tone).

7- Confront abusers intelligently

People who abuse psychologically at work, do so to people they perceive as weaker and passive. Normally, when the victim defends himself, the abuser at work begins to correct his bad behavior.

To deal with these people, you must be sure that you have social support behind you, stand firm and do not tolerate the abuse because they will repeat it again.

The first thing to do is try to solve the problem just by talking to the other person and using messages like "Yo, I don't work well if you treat me like this." Express yourself: to deal with negative behavior from another person, communicate that it bothers you using this structure: behavior, feelings and needs. For example, in the case of a colleague who treats you badly:

«When you treat me like this I feel bad, to work well I need to feel good. What is it that makes you behave like this?

Unfortunately, there will be people who are simply not interested in others and do not care to hurt. If the other person continues to behave the same or there is physical, psychological or verbal abuse, consult your superior or Human Resources.

When you talk to your boss or HR, ask him for advice and comment on the problem indirectly so that he perceives that you want to solve the problem yourself: «I'm having the problem that Manuel treats me badly and is rude at work. I don't want you to solve it although I would like you to give me some advice ».

8- If nothing works, you can look for another job

Life does not end in your current job and if you have behaved correctly. Evaluate what work brings you in terms of happiness, what it brings you financially, if you have options to find another. If the pros win, focus on fixing the problem.

If the cons win, focus on leaving your current job and looking for other solutions outside of it.