Bambi vs. Godzilla

How to Deal With Difficult People

 Difficult people are everywhere! They can be our co-workers, customers, supervisors, neighbors, and even family members. Difficult personality types can drain us of our energy and move us from a positive position to a negative state of mind very quickly. Many of us would like to avoid interacting with difficult people, or even worse, we can't help but react to them with frustration and defensiveness.

Imagine this scenario; you are sitting in a dental office reception room waiting calmly for your appointment. Then, a well-dressed professional looking man walks into the waiting area, strolls up to the the receptionist and says, "Good afternoon, my name is Mr. Jones, I am here for my three o'clock appointment." The receptionist greets him warmly, looks into her schedule, looks up and says, "Mr. Jones, I can see here that your appointment is for next Thursday at three o'clock, not today."

"What?!!" -- He explodes, "Do you think I am incompetent and don't know how to read a calendar!! What is your name young lady?! I'm going to talk to the doctor about you and your employment!!!"

I asked an audience in one of my corporate seminars the question of why there are difficult people, and why do they do what they do? With quick wit, a woman exclaimed, "Because they are evil!" Though it may feel that way sometimes, in actuality, difficult people do what they do for a strategic reason.

Think about the dental office story; why would this man explode in front of the receptionist in this manner? Because more likely than not, she is going to try to fit him into the schedule that day. You see, difficult people do what they do, not because they are evil, but because it works.

It is a strategy of problem-solving which they learned in childhood and carry into their adult relationships. Much of our personality development is a result of how we learned to handle conflict as children. In our preceding example, Mr. Jones most likely figured out as a child, that a way to handle conflict and get his needs met is by throwing a temper-tantrum. His behavior in the dental office is a mere microcosm of how he attempts to solve problems as an adult. Probably he explodes in the other relationships of his life as well; he explodes at his kids, his wife, and his co-workers. He has become an EXPLODER.

The first rule of thumb to realize when encountering a difficult person is to understand that they are simply displaying for you their primary defense mechanism and their unconscious strategy of getting their needs met.