Dealing with Difficult People

Learn how to disarm problem people, find common ground, and turn conflict into cooperation

In the last decade, technology has spawned a whole new breed of annoyances. From cell-phone chatters to email spammers to voice-mail hogs, life is now increasingly filled with even more difficult people.

At best, such people make life stressful and unpleasant. At worst, they can keep you from achieving important goals. But it's fully within your power to bring out the best behavior in people who are at their worst. The proven, innovative approach in Dealing with Difficult People will help you to:

• Identify 10 bothersome behaviors and deal successfully with each of them
• Understand why people become difficult
• Use sophisticated techniques to neutralize whining, negativity, attacks, tantrums and more
• Cultivate the nine "take-charge" skills that prevent people from becoming difficult

There's no reason to let unpleasant people get in the way of your performance in the workplace or in your life. With the help of these effective approaches to understanding and circumventing disruptive and annoying behavior, you can overcome the obstacles posed by difficult people in every phase of your life.

Difficult people are a fact of life. They blame, barrel over, whine, run away, or explode without notice. And the more you try to work with them, the harder they seem to work to screw up your plans.

The first step in learning how to work with problem people is to discover what makes them tick. Dealing with Difficult People explains where difficult people are coming from, and provides you with specific action steps you can take to neutralize their assaults and work successfully with them. Written by Dr. Rick Kirschner and Dr. Rick Brinkman, who teamed up more than 25 years ago to promote the health and well being of individuals, teams, and companies by empowering them with good communication skills, this entertaining and enlightening guidebook details:

• The four general intents that determine how people will react in any situation, and how to use them to understand the roots of a conflict
• Blending skills for reducing differences between yourself and a problem person
• Redirecting skills for using a growing rapport to change the trajectory of a problem interaction
• Personal techniques, from body posture to voice volume, for influencing behavior
• The 10 strategies for the 10 most difficult behaviors
• Projection strategies to motivate problem people to recognize their issues and change themselves

Your life is filled with people who frustrate you, enrage you, and battle with you every step of the way as you work to achieve your project and career goals. It's time you stopped fighting on their terms. Dealing with Difficult People gives you an innovative and psychologically sound program for understanding and working with all types of people, not matter how destructive their behaviors, by proactively using their own internal drivers to disarm them and create more productive interactions.