Monday Morning Leadership Tip #177: Do You Know Any Difficult People?

Before we can learn strategies for dealing with difficult people, we have to be able to understand who those people are and what causes them to be difficult.

Some people, granted, seem to just live their lives as if they were out to 'pick a fight' with someone all the time. There are helpful strategies to deal with those. But those people actually are the minority.

Most 'difficult people' are really just difficult circumstances -- or people who behave in such a way that it is inconsiderate of others. Many times, a person becomes difficult when his or her "pet peeve" button is pushed.

Let's look at a few of the top pet peeves when surveys are taken asking this very question:

Absenteeism, especially if it's frequent.
Missing deadlines, as it usually affects someone else's work.
Habitually late. This is one that you'll find almost any place where people work together. Some personalities are programmed with different time-clocks, and they are rarely on time for anything. The only people this doesn't bother are other people who are habitually late.
The perpetual joker; the person who makes a joke out of everything.
Incessant talking. Many times I've heard this struggle, especially from the person who wants to be a good listener, or doesn't want to be rude and just cut someone off. This is also a problem when the person talks incessantly in a team meeting, and dominates the conversation and the ability to progress and make decisions.
Bragging; the person who always is 'one up' on everyone else.
Breaking rules, especially the small rules, or even the unwritten but understood rules -- those that no one is really going to do anything about, but it just irritates others because it is seen as unprofessional and inconsiderate.
Taking undue credit for something, making him/herself look good, especially if it's at the expense of another.

This is certainly only a partial list; you can add your own here. This is probably not your typical way of thinking about a difficult person. But this can just give us a good look at some of the behaviors that create a 'difficult person.'

To deal effectively with difficult people, it's important to be able to separate the behavior from the person. In the e-course, Dealing with Difficult People, we address dealing with challenging people and also about preventing difficult situations. To do that well, we have to become well steeped in specific behaviors that define what makes a person hard to deal with.

Thinking about the above behaviors, we see that any of us could become a person that is very trying for someone else. Living your leadership means you do more than just label a person as 'difficult' and expand your thoughts to the causes, and also work on self-leadership at the same time -- making sure you are not contributing to the cause!

Dealing With Difficult People e-Course

To learn more about how to effectively manage and prevent difficulties in relationships, check out our "on-demand e-course" (which means you have the flexibility to take the course on your own time schedule). With 3 videos, 7 learning opportunities and handouts... you'll have all the tools to deal with those "difficult" people in your life. See the details here.

Looking for more "Live Your Leadership" topics? Take a look at all the e-courses on leadership development: