Summary

Working with difficult people can reduce your morale, threaten your productivity, deplete your energy, and waste your time. But you don't have to be helpless in the face of other people's craziness! Knowing how to handle coworkers' disruptive behavior is one of the most important career skills you can have, allowing you to become a more valuable employee and a more self-reliant person.

Author Biography

William Lundin, Ph.D. and Kathleen Lundin (Whitewater, WI) are the authors of When Smart People Work for Dumb Bosses.

Michael S. Dobson (New York, NY) is a consultant and popular seminar leader in project management, communications, and personal success. He is the president of his own consulting firm whose clients include Calvin Klein Cosmetics and the Department of Health and Human Services. He is the author of several books including Managing Up (978-0-8144-7042-8).

Introduction	p. 1
How Difficult Are You?	p. 5
Stop, Look, and Listen	p. 8
Maximizing Your Power	p. 13
It's Not (Always) Personal-It's (Often) Business	p. 18
Planning Your Strategy	p. 23
Working with Difficult Superiors	p. 27
Working with Difficult Subordinates	p. 30
Corporate Culture and Difficult People	p. 34
Mean and Angry	p. 38
Suspicious	p. 48
Pessimistic	p. 56
Cynical	p. 65
Shy and Quiet	p. 72
Narcissistic	p. 79
Extremely Competitive	p. 86
Overcontrolling	p. 95
Overly Flattering	p. 105
Lessons: Handling All Kinds of Difficult People	p. 114
Index	p. 117
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

INTRODUCTIONWhich of these statements do you agree with?Difficult people . . .Make my life miserable.Reduce my morale.Get me angry.Deplete my energies.Make me feel helpless.Ruin a good thing.Make me scream.Affect my productivity.Waste my time.Are insidious.And that may be only the beginning. Dealing with someone else's irritating behavior can really waste your time and sap your energy. For many of us, dealing with the stress and frustrations of other people has become so commonplace that it is considered normalthe way things are.Well, things don't have to be difficult. You can do something positive about difficult people in your workplace. This book will show you how to remake your attitude and behavior. The difficult person will still be there, but you will be less of a target. You, not the other person, will be in charge of the interaction.The spread of restructuring and downsizing has increased the amount of stress most employees have to cope with today because their future is less certain than it was in the past. And at the same time, employers are asking workers to produce more than ever before, with fewer people to share the workload. It's no wonder that people are becoming difficult to deal with.What have you noticed in your own workplace? Are your coworkers becoming touchier? More easily angered? More suspicious? Are they on edge? This state of affairs is all too common, perhaps the unavoidable result of the rapid rate of change in today's workplace and society in general.In this unsettled environment, knowing how to handle difficult people and their disruptive behavior is one of the most important skills you can have. It will help you become a more valuable employee and a more self-reliant person. By mastering the techniques set out in this book, you will increase both your energy and optimism. You'll see how to overcome the hurdles thrown down by difficult people and how to develop skills that can enrich both your work and private life.HOW THIS BOOK WILL HELP YOU DEAL WITH DIFFICULT PEOPLESome people are and always will be difficult; their irritating behavior is fixed deep within their personalities. Othersin fact, most peopleare upsetting to us only from time to time. But unless you know the person very well, it's not easy to recognize the differencewhether the annoying behavior is deep-seated or mostly situationalnor should you try. Your concern is how to handle disruptive behavior by getting a fresh fix on your own attitudes and reactions, not figuring out underlying causes of the other person's difficult behavior.While you cannot (and should not) expect to become a counselor to your coworkers, you can become more sensitive to them and learn how to befriend a coworker in need. Specifically, this book explains a system that will teach you to:* Understand your reaction to a difficult person.* Explore your attitudes and why you react as you do.* Practice healthier responses to those who are making your life miserable.To do our best work, we all need a level playing field, free of snares, thickets, traps, and drive-by emotional shootings. This book will help you create that level playing field by exploring specific ways to approach and respond to difficult people.AN EASY-TO-LEARN FORMATThere are countless difficult behaviors, and you can learn to deal with all of them. We have selected nine examples of difficult people taken from our case histories as teaching models. These case studies w