Handling Difficult People Training Course - 1 Day

The world is populated by people with a great diversity of character. Some character types, you find difficult to handle. But you need to handle them because they form part of your job.

So, we are here to answer a single question: “How can we get the best from ourselves and others?”

In order to get the best from difficult people, we must first learn how to get the best from ourselves.

This course is predominantly a personal development course designed to improve communication and confidence, so that we are empowered to positively affect others.

There are many skills needed, but they can all be subsumed under a smaller number of main headings.

1. Clear thought
2. Accurate language
3. Rational approach
4. Positive emotions
5. Body language
6. Voice tones

The course is based on these six themes.

We begin the process by asking you to self-assess, and measure yourself against a set of key skills, that we need, in order to be effective. You score yourself out of 10 for each one. Assuming you are not perfect, you will not give yourself top marks for everything. That means your lower scores have identified areas for potential improvement.

We all make impressions on the minds of others. Others form a mental image of you based upon two things, their own preconceptions and your behaviour. Their response is governed by their impression of you.

You cannot change their preconceptions, but you CAN change your behaviour in ways that will trigger an adaptive response.
In order to make progress with people, you need to decide how you wish to be perceived by others, and then act accordingly.

So, we will ask you to tell us, how do you want to be perceived by others?
We will make a list of the attributes we need.

There are many people who are difficult because they are intellectual, argumentative, contradictory, and have strong opinions. They are confident, articulate, sometimes pushy. They upset people and create tension. They can be intimidating. They ruffle feathers. These are the people we will now focus upon. How to deal with intellectually difficult people.

To achieve your purpose, you must first define it.

Your purpose is to gain the willing cooperation of the difficult person. That means you must find common ground between three sets:

1. What you want
2. What the other wants
3. What is reasonably / logically possible

In order to answer these three sets, you need to decide what you want, discover what they want and determine what is a rational way forward.

You need to discover what the other person wants. So, you need a formula for asking the right questions. We will give you an 8-step questioning formula which we will ask you to memorise and use.

Communication must be clear and distinct, with NO ambiguities or vagueness. Language is inherently slippery and difficult to pin down. But you must learn how to pin down exact meanings to words. Your words must be clearly understood by the other person, because you don’t want to create misunderstandings.

Equally, you must fully understand, (not just hear) what the other person is trying to tell you. We will show you a special formula, (called C.G.4D) that will allow you to clearly define what is meant by what is said.

This single technique, (C.G.4D.)  will improve your communication skills for the rest of your life.

You might think the other person is being negative. The other person would disagree with your assessment.

Nobody thinks they are negative. They regard their so called “negativity” as “realism”.
They even say it, “I’m not being negative, I’m only being realistic!”.

Difficult people have powerful intellects, but they are using it in reverse gear.
You need a technique that will transform their “NO can do” mind set, to a “Can do” mind set.

We will show you how to “flip the switch” in their head, from “problem creator” to “problem solver”.

Humans are open to suggestion. And suggestion can be a better way to approach people than issuing instructions or orders.

We will show you how you can use words as a form of positive suggestion. Words paint “pictures in the mind”. You need to use words that paint the right pictures.

We will show you how to use your language in persuasive ways.

When you learn this technique, you will find yourself using it all the time.

The Germans have a saying, “Übung macht den Meister” = Practice makes the master, Practice makes perfect! How will you put into practice what you have learned this morning?

This morning we talked abut how to handle people who are intellectually difficult.

This afternoon we shift our focus and discuss a more serious problem, how to handle people who behave badly. These situations are more explicit. They include behaviours such as lateness, physical bad habits, swearing, abusive words and behaviour. Or it may be laziness, or improper laxity or carelessness in the performance of their duties.

You might call this section, Performance management, or behaviour modification. Either way, it is not easy. To pull this off effectively, we all need training.

This afternoon is the training we need.

When faced with a difficult person, we all have four options of how to respond: With anger, with upset, by avoidance or by Reason.

Only reason works.

Most people try to use anger, upset and avoidance, even though we know they do not work.

In order to present a rational approach, we need to learn about:

• The importance of the self-concept
• How to use Objective language
• How to script your message
• Focus on the future
• How to gain commitment
• Assertive Body language and voice tones
• Finish on a positive
• Tame the lion

The self-concept is the core of personality. The self-concept is the image the person has of himself/ herself. It is the internal identity that people give to themselves. If you attack a person’s identity they will always respond negatively.

Therefore, never attack a person’s identity. In dealing with others, Never use negative identity statements; Statements that contain the phrase, “You ARE …(Something)”

You are annoying. You are rude. etc

To protect their self-concept, use only objective language.

You need to learn the difference between objective, NON- emotionally charged language, and subjective, emotionally charged.When you are in a negatively charged situation, DON’T use emotionally charged language. Use only objective language.

You will learn how to describe your message in objective terms. This section is super important, and you will be fascinated by it, and you will immediately recognise its usefulness. You will also come to realise how many times people mess up by violating this rule.

Now you know the rules to play by, you can begin writing scripts that will allow you to positively affect negative people. We will work the material together and see how it works in practice. In this section, you will begin to master this material.

You will begin to wonder, “Why didn’t they teach us this in school?”
(Because most teachers don’t know this either!)

Split time into two segments; the future and the past.

It is a mistake to argue for too long about the past. Why is that?
It is better to focus on the future. Why is that?

We will show you how to shift conversations “BACK to the FUTURE”.

The aim of this communication is for you to forge a solution that lies on the common ground between:

1. What you want
2. What the other wants
3. What is organisationally possible

You will work with the difficult person and appeal to the rational side of their mind. Every sane person has a rational side to their mind, and your task is to find it and appeal to that rational part.

Nobody regards themselves to be unreasonable.

Make use of their desire to be a “Reasonable person”.

It is not enough to know what to say. You also have to say it in the right way.

Be assertive, NOT aggressive, NOT passive.

We will show you how.

Body language is important: eye contact, body posture, facial expression, appearance, hand gestures. All these require your attention.

We will go through this list, step by step.

Voice tones are important too. Volume, pace, pitch, and intensity of emotion. We will go through each step and learn valuable lessons.

We have spent the afternoon defusing the potentially explosive situation. We have taken out the negative, to leave the situation emotionally neutral.

But now we go one step beyond. We add in the positive emotions.

It is important to add into your mix positive emotions so that the last thing that happens before they leave you, is that you finish on an affirmative.

We will show you how you can always finish on an affirmative.

You will discover that those people who seem to be ferocious lions, often feel they are misunderstood. From their perspective they are NOT difficult. They are passionate! And right!

If you speak to lions correctly you can win them over onto your side and in the future, they become your strongest ally.
I know this is true. I have seen it done. I have done it.

You can too - if you apply this material.

You have learned an amazing amount today. You need to digest this material and then commit to putting it into practice.
We will ask you, “What did you find most useful, and how will you use it?”