Have you ever had to deal with a difficult person at work? Well this video
is for you. Hi, my name is Adriana Girdler, I am president and chief
efficiency officer of CornerStone Dynamics and MyVisualVision.com. I
have a philosophy that people are innately good, people do not wake up and
say, I'm gonna make so-and-so's life miserable at work, they really don't do
that. So why is that when you go into work people sometimes are just miserable?
Well, I don't have an answer for that 'cause that could be many things, they could have
had a bad day at home and they brought it with them, perhaps something happened
at work and you happen to be the person that they came in contact with
and boom, you were the one that got whatever they were dealing with and you
got the impact of it. So with the intent of knowing that people are innately good
how do you deal with these difficult people to turn the situation around? Well
I have four simple steps for you to follow and let's get to it
step number one is stay calm and don't take it on. So what do I mean by that?
When we get bombarded and we walk into a situation without realizing that we're
walking into a loaded situation, or what I call an emotionally charged situation, we
can, through our defenses, just through the ability of how we are as human
beings, our stress levels go up and then we can go into fight or flight mode. So
that being said, that's why sometimes when people get really upset with us we
get upset back to them, but you really want to stay calm and don't take it on
you're at work you have no idea what happened here you just come bombarded
don't take on that same energy. So what can you do? The key is is to relax. I know
that may be a little bit hard when you've just been bombarded but relax,
take a deep breath and repeat over and over in your head, wow this is not me
something happened here, to calm yourself down because guess what? If you're calm
the other person will pick up on that and that's a step number one is stay
calm and don't take it on
step number two is now that you have remained calm and you're not taking it
on, you want to ask that particular person to clarify what their issue is.
Listen to them and then repeat it back. So there's a couple of reasons why we do
this, the first one is it shows that you're really interested in what is it
that it that they have to say. They just bombarded you so they have this need to
be listened to so that's a really good thing that's happening but number two,
it's allowing you to kind of really understand what is the issue here, what
are the facts? Like truly you're not reacting now to the charge of the
situation but what really is going on here so when you listen and repeat
back it allows you to truly understand what's happening and be more factual
with the situation at hand. Step number three is a follow up to step number two,
now that you've actually listened to what it is that they're saying, you've
repeated back, I want you to focus on the facts and not the person. This can
sometimes be hard because depending on how we were bombarded we may want to
bombard back, ok, our own emotional charge is coming up so the calmness is critical,
listening to what's going on but now having the facts in dealing with them
solely can really take the charge out of the situation so I want you to really
focus on that. Understand what it is that you have to do, bring them with you to
your computer and start looking at what has to be done so that you can really
understand what's going on and realize this, they may be having a bad day, okay
we've all been in that scenario where we've bombarded somebody else, right?
Don't judge it, don't say, oh my god this person is an idiot or they're crazy or
whatever it may be, give some compassion, realize we all have bad days and we are
gonna have a bad day ourselves because we're not perfect, we're human, so treat
that person with compassion, realize that there could be a lot of things going on
that we just don't know that's perhaps adding to why they're in that particular
mode but deal with the facts and don't worry about anything else and again have
some compassion. The last step to this is you want to find a solution and you want
to empower yourself, so let's first talk about the solution part.
Now that you've calmed, you listened, you repeated back, you're now only looking
at the problem at hand and you're not judging the person, you're gonna find the
solution so that everyone can walk out of the situation with actually some
resolution. That sometimes can be hard to do, a lot of people sometimes have a hard
time with actually closing what I call this loop, this gap, so spend the time
needed to find what the solution is, and agree to who is gonna do what. That way
you've actually closed the situation, but the last part I don't want you to forget
is the empowerment part. So what do I mean about that exactly? Well this person
just bombarded you, they you know you weren't expecting it whatsoever and you
remain calm,so congratulations, but if you didn't you probably would have been
charged back and that would have created more issues, so you need to let that
person know of their behavior but you need to do in a loving way.
so the empowerment part is, so-and-so, are you okay with the solution we have now?
Fantastic, can I just ask you a favor? Next time when you do have this problem
can you chat with me about it versus bombarding me or yelling at me or
telling me how wrong I was because see how easy it was for us to find the
solution together than it was to put the blame on it? It takes a lot of courage to
do that, I highly recommend you do because it empowers yourself and allows
for compassion for that other person as well something that is really needed in
our workplaces. Guess what, you don't have to be mean or nasty to be good at work,
we can actually have amazing work cultures if we treat each other with
that respect and the first part is how do you deal with those difficult people
in those difficult situations. So I hope you found this information very valuable,
if you did in the comments below please put down, yes I've experienced
this difficult situation, that would be awesome. If you want to go step further,
give me what your scenario was. I'd love to hear it and how you resolved it that
really worked well for you, remember communication is key and ensuring that
you don't get caught up in that emotional charge is the part that's
really going to help distinguish whether the event turns out great or turns out
terrible. On that note, please give this video a thumbs up,
please subscribe below for more great videos that we have that's gonna allow
you to work smarter and not harder and if you can share this with your friends,
family and colleagues, I would be so grateful and appreciative of that as
well. Until the next video, I'll see you later.
Bye!