Dealing with Difficult People

The skill of dealing with difficult people in our workplace is a necessary tool for us all to have in our social tool box. Welcome to our website.

We are glad you are here. If you or a loved one is having trouble in this area, this may help. We hope that we can give you support and provide you with insight for dealing with those not easy to get along with.

Having to be dealing with difficult people as problem bosses or coworkers is fairly common, regardless of the education or income level of the company involved.

It is a sad fact that there are just as many dysfunctional professionals as there are tradesman or entry level employees. We all have to face dealing with difficult people effectively at some point in our careers. Dealing with difficult people in the workplace can cost us years out of our financial progress, and in years creating our emotional estate as well.

In dealing with difficult people, we need to understand the dynamics behind their manipulative techniques and their skills at entering into our boundaries, more about that later. We will talk about it in the social ranking context here.

Like Salmon swimming upstream to spawn, or gazelles crossing a river to migrate, we humans have to go to work. At the stream’s edges are brown bears hoping to catch a salmon, and waiting under the surface of the river are crocodiles intent on a gazelle lunch.

Lurking in our workplace settings are characters just as predatory as any brown bear or crocodile. These predators are the difficult people in our work world with which we will need to interact if we are to survive. Dealing with denizens of the social deep workplace is a mandatory skill we must master if we are to survive financially and emotionally.

We can perceive others as being difficult to work with for two reasons, the first is they cause us unnecessary hardship in the discharge of our duties; the second is they do not give us the recognition we need for tasks we perform.

Because we are humans with emotional needs, we require not one, but two forms of payment for the work that we do. The first form of payment is of course money. The other form of payment is respect and recognition for the role we play within the company and to its customers.

As long as we receive the money we need and the respect we want, all is well. However, the work setting can be a haven for predatory persons. Each of us will need to acquire a small inventory of tools with which to deal with them in our own way. Not all tools will work for everyone, but one tool will work for each if we find the right one for us.

Dealing with Difficult People and Understanding Their Leverage These difficult people can be company owners, bosses, or coworkers with a leveraged bargaining position. They, like us seek financial and emotional satisfaction in their work setting.

For them, alternatively, having a junior coworker to abuse and manipulate may be what they want in their world to prosecute their own emotional agenda. In other words, they need a victim and an audience to make them feel complete.

Dealing with these difficult people in our workplace will mean us not being either their victim or their audience, and not playing their game.

Coworkers can cause us stress for two separate reasons. The first is the requirements of the job. If the tasks they must do are very specific, and require a high degree of punctuality, being difficult from our standpoint may be a necessary part of their, and our operation. This would be the case in a high output kitchen, a production environment, or in a very competitive situation like a bidder in a car auction or stock market.

In those situations, yelling and strong emphasis in all communications is necessary. All workers must be very extrovert, and at times have very thick skin to be successful in those types of work.

In these fast-paced settings, giving encouraging feedback to a needful coworker is not always possible. The requirements of the job may not allow for compliments and praises at the time the worker seeks praise. A worker needing recognition in these settings must see that recognition in a subjective way.

If the offending superior or coworker does not directly say ‘good job!’ in words, then we must look for it in their actions. Does the superior or coworker repeatedly seek out us to work with when they come under the gun? Do they call us in on extra days when they could as easily call in another? Do they give larger workloads to us that need special attention and be done accurately?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then see their present treatment towards us as a compliment. Our employer or coworker is simply putting their best foot forward in utilizing us above others, because they want it done right, and they trust us more than they trust our peers.

If they are using us, that means they need us. Interpret that as a good thing, even if they do not compliment us personally with words. In this day of competition in labor markets from overseas and within different worker age groups here at home, being included is itself an unspoken compliment.

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Dealing with Difficult People: Is God prompting us to advance to a new role in our profession?

Be sure your job discomfort is coming from the boss or co-worker as the source, and not from us being in the wrong line of work for our personality. Our present dissatisfaction may be God calling us to a higher form of employment where we will be much happier. Over time, we all progress up the employment ladder as we age.

Perhaps we are long overdue to progress into supervision or a higher line of work. Players in sports become coaches, actors become producers, truck drivers become dispatchers, and in many fields of work, employees start their own businesses.

Perhaps this need to be dealing with difficult people in the workplace is a prompting from God to move us up in life to a higher position, where we have more authority which we rightly deserve.

or coworker will see us through his or her own world view. If they do not need recognition for the tasks that they do, they will not be aware that we may need personal recognition for certain things that we do. They may assume that the work setting has met our emotional needs simply because the same setting has met theirs.

Having emotional needs is not a sign of weakness, and seeking recognition for our participation within a company is our right, not a luxury. The work setting has met their emotional needs, and our work setting should meet ours as well.

In review, we must first consider if we are getting compliments from our employer’s actions, even if they do not openly tell us. If we have, then we move on to the next consideration.

Then we must consider if we are in the line of work for our age group. Once we have answered that second question to our satisfaction, then we can move on to the issue of our unacceptable co-worker.

Do you see a pattern here? We always start with the internal questions first, then we move outwards to the external questions. We have determined that our employer is giving us the recognition we need, even if it is not in the concrete form we may wish.

Next, we have determined that we are in the right setting God has for us where we can be happiest. Each one of us has a proper place of happiness, prosperity, and fulfillment at every point in our lives that we are to be in so we can grow to the next place.

If we still see the supervisor or coworker as being unacceptably difficult, then we address their poisoning behavior towards us.

We deserve to get our selfish nurturement needs met, and if a boss or coworker degrades us, humiliates us, and ignores our need for respect, then we need to engage them. There can only be one outcome, if the stress they are causing us is intolerable.

Effectively dealing with difficult people in the workplace means either getting them to give us the cooperation and respect we deserve, or we leave them and find another place to work.

We do deserve cooperation and respect, and at some point, either they or another work setting must provide that cooperation towards us, that is the bottom line. You deserve to work in a setting comfortable to you.

How we project our power to defend our emotional interests is much like how a country projects its power to defend its political interests.

The first attempts are always diplomatic and polite. We do not start out by sending our aircraft carriers and nuclear attack submarines into their coastal waters to get respect. We talk to the offending party and explain our position in a manner consistent with our personality.

We begin by engaging them as a friend, and offer to buy them refreshment in the break room or from the snack truck when it comes around at break time. Every time you see them in the hallway or in the parking lot, make it a point to speak to them by name and recognize their presence.

Even among dysfunctional personalities, recognition goes a long ways. This behavior may be all the other party needs and they may back off from their oppressive behavior towards us. This is particularly necessary for newcomers as they enter a company.

If the offending co-worker is senior to us, then it is a good possibility the senior worker is waiting for us to acknowledge our own newcomer status, even though we may have been there awhile. Once we have acknowledged admission as the lesser seniority employee to them, then they will feel relief and can back off from their harsh initiation posture towards us. We have seen this numerous times.

Everyone within any social group has a natural suspicion of newcomers into that group, and the more extrovert personalities will manifest these rites of passage upon the newbies.

Once the senior employees and alpha pack leaders see us acknowledge our newbie status, they are then free to be more polite and accommodating to us, as we are not contesting their authority.

One of the best ways to do this is to ask them for advice on something. This lets them know we recognize them as older, stronger, and wiser in the ways of the company and its customers. Seeking their wisdom tells them we place them above us in status, which in fact raises our status within the group.

Finding approval with a pack leader will establish our place within the company, since we seek entry into the group on the group’s terms.

Remember, this is not about job skills or competency; it is about social ranking and getting along with others in the social environment only. Exerting our professional prowess or superior product knowledge over those senior to us will do us no good here.

What the other employees want to see is how much we need them, and how much we want to be part of their group. If we do not demonstrate a need for acceptance from the alpha members within the group, they will keep us out of the loop socially and professionally.

Showing compliance to their social norms will create security in the group. Difficult people in our group may be questioning our acceptance of their values, if we tend to be an individualist.

Even the most skilled worker will be outcast if they do not need to be part of the group on the group’s terms. Group integrity is what this is about, not job skills or productivity. How good we are at dealing with difficult people in our workplace may well mean just finding our pecking order within the group.

In order to find that order we need to relate to the senior members in the group and establish our personal relationships with them.

As we do that, our ranking with the other members will follow. Most of the time dealing with difficult people in the workplace simply means establishing our place in the work group hierarchy with our seniors.

If that does not work then dealing with these difficult people will be largely a matter of navigating around an entrenched personality’s defenses and finding their weaknesses.

Usually bully type personalities have the endorsement of their employer for their boundary crossing behaviors, which makes defense against them more difficult than with a peer. In that case we must work on relationships with their peers and supervisors whom we can gain acceptance from.

Gradually these other relationships can bring pressure on the offender and they will back off. Even a bully will not pick on a popular co worker, highly respected by others. Bullying and oppressive personalities are cowards and they look for weak and isolated individuals to abuse.

Dealing with difficult people is possible if we use our gut feelings about how to address each situation separately.

If we cannot engage them directly, engage them with respect from the others in our workplace whom will collectively stand up for us, over time.

Once a difficult co worker or customer senses our popularity because we are respected within the group they will seek easier prey. It may take a lot time, but just be yourself and work on your relationships with the offender, and everyone else, and the tables will turn.

Dealing with Difficult People in The Workplace