How to Deal with Difficult People | Jay Johnson | TEDxLivoniaCCLibrary

I want you to think about a time when maybe you were interacting with someone that you felt was

difficult

as you were sitting there and talking to them, maybe arguing, maybe tensions are starting to rise if you can feel your palms starting to sweat. You can feel your breathing starting to shorten You can feel yourself getting angry and at some point in that conversation you decide I've had enough of this It's time for me to go You leave You move five steps this way and you hit yourself and say oh, I should have That said, I would have totally understood them, that's a product of our brain when we meet someone maybe for the first time and we shake their hand, we say hello, how? you're my name is Jay nice to meet you and something in the back of your mind is already hitting you and saying I'm not going to like this person very much if you've experienced that believe me, you're not alone our brain is designed To survive, which Daniel Goleman called the low road is something we look at others in, we call it the limbic system, our fear regulates our fight or flight response when

deal

ing with

difficult

people

, ultimately what we are doing is trying to overcome that response.

It's a natural response that we have, in fact, it's an important response, it's the response that stress enters the body, which is why we see things like adrenaline, norepinephrine, cortisol, flood the system when we are involved with those difficult

people

, we are in a high state. of anxiety during that and our other systems start to shut down, we don't think rationally, our metabolism slows down, we can even get acne from having too many stress hormones in the body, is that the way we want to live our lives, the conflict in the In the workplace among difficult people, people are not difficult, it has serious impacts and ultimately what it does is cause absenteeism in turnover, it can even cause projects to fail, so what can we do about it ?

We cannot change other people's behavior. I can't make someone behave. the way I want them to do it, so I guess maybe we need to look at a different framework of operation from the inside when we look at people. One of the ways we can begin to change this conversation with ourselves is to look at how we label them. so we label someone as difficult or annoying in the you know what, we also have these archetypes that we tend to create, for example, one of the people you might run into in the office, you walk in to have a conversation with them and they don't raise their face. head they're just sitting there, texting, playing under the computer and not paying attention to you, that's the non-listening archetype, we have other types of art like this -up, if you've ever been had a party and You tell a story and then what happens?

Someone has to tell a better story or you go and buy a new dress and someone has to get a better dress or something like that. that's always the archetype of the best what about the gossiper, the person who goes around and gossips about different people in the office, puts it almost just to cause problems? What about the curmudgeon, the person who has been there and done that and remembers the glory days of everything that is right or wrong in your organization now part of my framework is behavior and I can guarantee you that at some point When I was talking about those archetypes you gave a name and a face to each of those individuals, yes.

I see the knots when we look at that and understand that those are the different behaviors that really impact us individually. We know we need to change the simple message: why should we have to change ourselves because of someone else's behavior? Because it's your heart attack those homework stress hormones are killers it's your heart attack so if we can't change other people's behavior the only thing we can change is our own behavior let's look at a unique approach through behavioral intelligence behavioral intelligence really has four quadrants to be able to explain existing behaviors, predict future behaviors, influence other people's behaviors, and control our own behaviors, and we'll talk about that in the context of difficult people, so one of the things What we want to look at is how we explain the behaviors when we see someone doing something we really don't like and we label them maybe they're stubborn, at the same time couldn't we see our friend doing that and say well, he's just stubborn?

We see someone do something we feel. like it's aggressive, but on the other hand, we look at our friend who has the exact same behavior and say wow, they're dedicated, they're motivated, they're passionate, yet some of these labels start to creep into the way we understand the world, it's a prejudice. that we have, so we want to look a little deeper and ask why someone behaved that way. Is it something inherent? Is it an intrinsic desire that pushes them to behave that way? Now this is a tough question because we are in a pickle right now, one of the things that really frustrates us is ourselves, at that point we don't take the time to ask, we just tag and move on, but again, it's your attack on the heart, it's your organization that's suffering, so are we.

I have to look at this in a different way, asking questions is one of the best ways to explain behavior and I will give you an example of a case study, one of my favorite case studies from when I was working with two different divisions in a company . management organization one division had a manager and I'm going to rename them Bill and Ted to protect the guilty we had Bill on one side and we had Ted on the other and these two couldn't get along in any way they were constantly in The differences between each other caused the projects to fail and ultimately I was called in to take a look at this and say what behaviors are out there that are creating this situation, so I had Bill and Ted write down everything they felt about each other person. put it on paper and then I asked them to send it to me, so I take a look at it, I review it, and as I read it, the value of being an objective outside observer is an incredibly valuable thing to draw from for yourself. a situation is something you can do too when I start reading, I read bills about Ted and Bill says that Ted constantly comes to my office asking questions, he is bothering me, he will never leave me alone, he is such a constant contact, ok so I read .

Ted and Ted say that Bill just doesn't bother with me. My manager keeps telling me to go to Bill and ask him these questions to find out more because all of his experience, his knowledge, his value to the organization, but he just doesn't want to listen. He doesn't listen, so he brought these two people and I put them at the table and I share with them each other's perspective and I swear he was like a lady in one when they suddenly looked at each other like, oh God. OMG I had no idea you valued my opinion so much and on the other hand he was OMG!

I can't believe that's the way I'm behaving in this environment and suddenly we started looking and they were able to answer each other's narrative that narrative that was hidden from them because they didn't ask questions they didn't go to why they just tagged them. they labeled them difficult once we can explain the behaviors then we can predict the behaviors we can predict what is what is going to happen that will help reduce uncertainty uncertainty is one of the things that if you have ever received a phone call from a superior saying : Hey, can you come to my office immediately?

What's going on? You don't believe. Oh, I'm going. to get a raise, this is going to be great, you start to think what did I do, oh my gosh, this could be the worst, that uncertainty creates some of that anxiety and when we bring that anxiety into a conversation or into the relationship, that will feel the another person, so by being able to predict those types of behaviors, it will actually reduce anxiety if you've ever been in a situation where you've said, "Hey, listen, my friend will probably say X Y or Z, don't do it." offended by that, that's how they are, that's a fundamental effect of prediction, we can forgive or we can be prepared to not be hit by an avalanche of anxiety that influences behaviors, we look at this and say, how do we necessarily influence that person?

A difficult person is to use inclusive language when we talk about someone, if I say their behavior is X, Y and Z, immediately the walls will go up, they will get defensive, they will look for ways in which their behavior behaves. contribute to it and respond and all of a sudden we're in a discussion and we're in a place where we can't necessarily get out of that difficulty compared to when we started talking and using inclusive language as I noticed We're having trouble communicating that key word here , we're having trouble communicating because communication is a two-way street, we should probably take a look at this a little more effectively and now all of a sudden it's togetherness, we.

By involving the other person, we are bringing them together. One of the other ways we can influence other people's behavior is through reward and recognition, like a child going to the bathroom when he is supposed to and where he is supposed to. giving them an M&M, we never outgrow that behavior as adults, but when we disagree or when we work with someone difficult, it is very difficult for us to think that giving them recognition or a reward would be of value to us. but if they do something good we can reach out to them and say, "Hey, I thought your report today was great and all of a sudden we started getting out of that enemy zone and being friends, and let me tell you, it's so much more." It is valuable at work or anywhere else to be a friend because if people like you they will do business with you and if they don't like you they will do everything they can to usurp you and be successful so using something like a recognition scenario or reward. it's something that can really help build that influence and that report.

They will start to see you as maybe not necessarily the difficult person. I used to be a difficult person when I talk about difficulties. I'm sure there are many people who still find it difficult, but the reality is that until we recognize that each of us is a difficult person for another person, we will never be able to adjust our behavior and that is where we control some of the self-awareness. aspects, so some of the things we can do to control that lower pathway system, that limbic system that fears that flight or fight response that we have when we interact with someone who is difficult for us, is as simple as I learned in the garden As infants we first breathe deeply when we breathe deeply and when we exhale we flood our body with oxygen.

Now that fight or flight system doesn't know the difference between interacting with a difficult person or a lion chasing you. and if a Lion chases you, you're going to go, no, not at all, no, you're going to run, you're going to scream, so when we take a deep breath, we're literally telling our system that the low road system is okay, look how we are. breathing, look at how we handle ourselves, another way is to count to ten and that does not mean staying there, going one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I'm still angry because it probably won't be effective to work with that difficult person but counting to ten is as simple as saying you know what I noticed we're both getting a little passionate about this why don't we take a little break why don't we take a step back and we reset and in I come to this with a clear head and notice again that I'm using that inclusive language, we are together because together we can solve the problem, so when we look at that, another way that I love to look at difficult people is to separate them.

The person's behavior in many cases we label them as difficult to

deal

with, but if we look at it and say I don't like this behavior that this person, this human being, is exhibiting, it separates those two things for us, the label is no longer there. in them, it's in the behavior and then we can separate it and say: "this is the hill we want to die on", that behavior is worth my heart attack and I would like to think that the answer to that is no, so with all the impacts what we see in this model. of behavioral intelligence gives us the opportunity to explain existing behaviors to ask those questions of why predict future behaviors to reduce the uncertainty around them to influence the behavior of other people why our relationships are important and if we do not participate in those relationships, we'll guess what they're going to continually go down and see the impact of conflict in the workplace and on ourselves and then we can control our own behavior by being a little more reflective and aware of how we are and again why we should have to do it.

So why should we be the people who have to change our behavior to deal with difficult people? Ultimately, it's your heart attack and someone else's bad behavior notshould be the cause of your heart attack. Thank you so much.