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. Working with Difficult People defines nine fundamental types of difficult people and gives you a complete system for opening lines of communication, resolving differences, and avoiding office headaches. This audiobook teaches you how to: understand your own reactions to different kinds of difficult people explore the interrelationship between yourself and the problematic employee ? whether it's a boss, fellow coworker, or someone you manage practice healthier responses to those who make your life miserable You?ll find out how to proactively manage your relationships with those who are mean and angry, suspicious, pessimistic, shy, narcissistic, overly competitive, controlling, and more. This audio edition includes an action plan for preparing for encounters and confrontations as well as all-new verbal self-defense tips, guidance on how to master power dynamics, and ways to differentiate between situational issues and psychological ones.
Working with Difficult People is somewhat of a short introduction for what might drive a difficult person's thinking and their actions. The book opens with a self-examination of whether or not you might be the difficult person causing the disruptions you dislike in the workplace. All scenarios focus on the workplace but could be translated into any situation. Overall the book is short given the complexity of the subject. A reader who prior to reading this book has not embarked on a learning journey of attempting to understand human behavior and its relevance to interpersonal dynamics should realize that this book doesn't even scratch the surface what there is to learn and seek out other sources to learn more. Overall, this book does not do the subject justice.
The difficult people brought forward in this book as causal-factors by customers who approach a consultant for aid are recognizable enough (over-controlling, sycophant, ..) . The ways of handling them is unfortunately non breakthrough for me, it equates to the advise of taking an umbrella when it rains: true but not revalatory and too limited vs desired outcome, I don't want to cope, I want change.
Learning how to handle difficult people and disruptive behaviour is a critical career skill in today's high stress workplace.
This book deals with nine different types of difficult people, and outline a system for resolving differences, opening lines of communication, and avoiding office headaches.
The book deals with 1. Mean and Angry boss 2. Suspicious Manager 3. Pessimist peer 4. Cynic Manager 5. Shy and quiet supervisor 6. Narcissist subordinate 7. Extremely competetive peer 8. Overcontrolling peer 9. Toady subordinate(feeling of toadiness).
Other kinds of difficult people can be a combination of the above as follows.
Unresponsive 5, 3 and 2 Negative 2 and 3 Know-it-all 1, 6, 7 and 8 Indecisive 2, 3 and 4 Complainer 1, 2, 4 and 7 Sneak 1, 2, 7 and 8 Whiner 2, 3 and 4 Politician 1, 4, 6, 7 and 8 Manipulator 1, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 Procrastinator 2, 3 and 4 Staller 2, 4 and 9 Exploder 1, 7 and 8 Sniper 1, 2, 7, 8 and 9 Sarcastic 1, 4, 6, 7 and 8 Thin skinned 2, 5 and 9
Well written and organized-it will help you deal with all the nut bags in your cube farm-from co workers, peers, and managers. I believe Lundin is a therapist so this has a very strong bias but lots of it are spot on-I saw so many of the freaks in my zoo on these pages. It hasn't really helped me figure out what to do with them but it does give you a framework to assess things by. The big take away is that's its not really about you-none of us are that important!
Okay , I kept noticing this book on my boss' shelf for a long while now . It is positioned on the shelf just perfectly so that her office mate can see it at all times ! I had to pick it up and check it out ;-)
I think this book did a really good job of breaking down the kind of difficult people you might come in contact with at work and different strategies on how to handle them.