Overview

Working with Difficult People

Challenging individuals appear in many contexts—as colleagues, direct reports, clients, supervisors, team members, or even within personal relationships. These individuals may display persistent negativity, shift blame while complaining, demonstrate rude or bullying behavior, spread gossip, miss deadlines, or fail to keep commitments, creating ongoing frustration and workplace difficulty.

Why you should Attend:

This session provides practical strategies to effectively interact with challenging individuals while maintaining professional composure. You will learn to:

• Work productively with the seven most common types of difficult people

• Create a customized action plan for dealing with your specific challenging individual, even if they don't fit standard categories

• Establish clear interpersonal agreements to prevent recurring issues

• Assert yourself appropriately without aggression, particularly when confronting bullies and those who make undermining comments

• Address dishonesty and manipulative behavior as it occurs

• Protect yourself from passive-aggressive behavior and backstabbing

• Confidently respond to workplace bullies, including those in positions of authority

• Engage withdrawn individuals to encourage contribution and reduce negative impact

• Maximize contributions from self-proclaimed experts while minimizing disruptive behavior

• Guide overly talkative individuals to focus on relevant points

• Help people pleasers deliver on commitments rather than overpromising

• Transform chronic complainers into problem-solvers

• Maintain your own positive mental attitude throughout challenging interactions

Areas Covered in the Session:

• Identifying and understanding difficult behavior patterns

• Fundamental principles of human behavior

• Underlying motivations for difficult behavior

• Comprehensive approach for handling any challenging person

• Specific techniques for different difficult personality types

• Customized strategies for your particular situation

Who Will Benefit:

• Any professional who interacts with others in the workplace

• Team leaders and managers

• Customer-facing staff

• Project managers and cross-functional collaborators

• Essentially, anyone who works with people