Dealing with difficult people

Dealing with difficult people Matt Oct 13 2006

17 comments Latest by Scott Mackenzie

I recently got an email that I enjoyed a lot promoting this seminar: Dealing with Difficult People (“Techniques for handling difficult people with tact and skill”).

Never again fall victim to those who love to make life miserable for the rest of us. This training gives you concrete techniques for dealing with difficult people in the workplace and at home. It provides specific strategies for getting adversaries to cooperate … bullies to back off … wallflowers to open up … chronic complainers to quiet down.

Check out the site. I like the list of undesirables and how they single out both “Yes” people (“They agree to any commitment, yet rarely deliver. You can’t trust them to follow through.”)...and then “No” people (“They are quick to point out why something won’t work. Worse, they’re inflexible.”) What about those awful “Maybe” people!?

And I’m fascinated by the portion of the day titled “Be less of a target for difficult people.” Man, this sounds like David Brent territory.

The ironic part is that the attendees of this seminar are probably the most difficult people imaginable: those who are convinced that everyone else is the problem.

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17 comments so far

kev 13 Oct 06

“The ironic part is that the attendees of this seminar are probably the most difficult people imaginable: those who are convinced that everyone else is the problem.”

Amen!

James Collins 13 Oct 06

Christ, they’ll give a seminar on anything.

Donna French 13 Oct 06

I printed this & gave a copy to my boss.

Daniel 13 Oct 06

@37s, your code isn’t checking the URL field of this form for “http://”. So clicking on “Kev” or “Donna French” for example tries to open their sites in this directory.

Sorry to bug report here. But since you just switched to your own blog engin, maybe it’s worth mentioning.

Jamie Huskisson 13 Oct 06

Sounds brilliant – I could’ve used this seminar 6 months ago!

Shame they don’t have an offering for this seminar on their audio conferences.. though they do have ‘dealing with difficult customers’ here: http://www.pryor.com/mkt_info/audioconf/AudioConf_DiffCustomers.asp

Might be worth a listen

Joshwa 13 Oct 06

Spoken like someone who’s had the good fortune of never having worked in a truly dysfunctional workplace…

Some (not all) of those descriptions are, sadly, dead-on.

Also, I don’t think some commenters have caught on that you’re actually making fun of the seminar description!

brad 13 Oct 06

Have you been fired yet?

Justin Ward 14 Oct 06

So true.

Roman Rytov 15 Oct 06

A Suidward-type is probably a no-people. Here is a chunk of advice on how to manage them in a team: How to manage Squidward in your team

Doug 15 Oct 06

I notice that there’s no name attached to this post. Is it an ad?

JF 15 Oct 06

Look up at the title of the post. Next to it you’ll see purple/pink type that says “Matt.”

Donna 16 Oct 06

Brad – no, I didn’t get fired. LOL He actually asked if it was for real. He’s well known for being ‘difficult’...(hint: Google vs. ...)

Spud 16 Oct 06

Wish I could have attended. How about one on dealing with difficult bosses?

Doug 16 Oct 06

The author name doesn’t appear in IE6 for this post, in fact no name no date. It looks OK in Firefox.

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