How Smart People Handle Difficult People
By Travis Bradberry, entrepreneur.com
Toxic people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the
negativity they spread, while others seem to derive satisfaction from
creating chaos.
Difficult people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the
negative impact that they have on those around them, and others seem to
derive satisfaction from creating chaos and pushing other people’s buttons. Either way, they create unnecessary complexity, strife and worst of all stress.
Studies have long shown that stress can have a lasting, negative impact on the brain. Exposure to even a few days of stress compromises the effectiveness of neurons in the hippocampus -- an important brain area responsible for reasoning and memory. Weeks of stress cause reversible damage to neuronal dendrites (the small “arms” that brain cells use to communicate with each other), and months of stress can permanently destroy neurons. Stress is a formidable threat to your success -- when stress gets out of control, your brain and your performance suffer.
Most sources of stress at work are easy to identify. If your non-profit is working to land a grant that your organization needs to function, you’re bound to feel stress and likely know how to manage it. It's the unexpected sources of stress that take you by surprise and harm you the most.
Recent research from the Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology at Friedrich Schiller University in Germany found that exposure to stimuli that cause strong negative emotions -- the same kind of exposure you get when dealing with difficult people -- caused subjects’ brains to have a massive stress response. Whether it's negativity, cruelty, the victim syndrome or just plain craziness, difficult people drive your brain into a stressed-out state that should be avoided at all costs.
The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a million people, and we’ve found that 90 percent of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control. One of their greatest gifts is the ability to neutralize difficult people. Top performers have well-honed coping strategies that they employ to keep difficult people at bay.
While I’ve run across numerous effective strategies that smart people employ when dealing with difficult people, what follows are some of the best. To deal with difficult people effectively, you need an approach that enables you, across the board, to control what you can and eliminate what you can’t. The important thing to remember is that you are in control of far more than you realize.
1. They set limits.
Complainers
and negative people are bad news because they wallow in their problems
and fail to focus on solutions. They want people to join their pity
party so that they can feel better about themselves. People often feel
pressure to listen to complainers because they don’t want to be seen as
callous or rude, but there’s a fine line between lending a sympathetic
ear and getting sucked into their negative emotional spiral.
You
can avoid this only by setting limits and distancing yourself when
necessary. Think of it this way: if the complainer were smoking, would
you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? You’d
distance yourself, and you should do the same with complainers. A great
way to set limits is to ask complainers how they intend to fix the
problem. They will either quiet down or redirect the conversation in a
productive direction.
2. They rise above.
Difficult
people drive you crazy because their behavior is so irrational. Make no
mistake about it; their behavior truly goes against reason. So why do
you allow yourself to respond to them emotionally and get sucked into
the mix? The more irrational and off-base someone is, the easier it
should be for you to remove yourself from their traps. Quit trying to
beat them at their own game. Distance yourself from them emotionally and
approach your interactions like they’re a science project (or you’re
their shrink, if you prefer the analogy). You don’t need to respond to
the emotional chaos -- only the facts.
3. They stay aware of their emotions.
Maintaining an emotional distance requires awareness.
You can’t stop someone from pushing your buttons if you don’t recognize
when it’s happening. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in situations where
you’ll need to regroup and choose the best way forward. This is fine
and you shouldn’t be afraid to buy yourself some time to do so.
Think
of it this way -- if a mentally unstable person approaches you on the
street and tells you he’s John F. Kennedy, you’re unlikely to set him
straight. When you find yourself with a coworker who is engaged in
similarly derailed thinking, sometimes it’s best to just smile and nod.
If you’re going to have to straighten them out, it’s better to give
yourself some time to plan the best way to go about it.
4. They establish boundaries.
This
is the area where most people tend to sell themselves short. They feel
like because they work or live with someone, they have no way to control
the chaos. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Once you’ve found
your way to Rise Above a person, you’ll begin to find their behavior
more predictable and easier to understand. This will equip you to think
rationally about when and where you have to put up with them and when
you don’t. For example, even if you work with someone closely on a
project team, that doesn’t mean that you need to have the same level of
one-on-one interaction with them that you have with other team members.
You
can establish a boundary, but you’ll have to do so consciously and
proactively. If you let things happen naturally, you are bound to find
yourself constantly embroiled in difficult conversations. If you set
boundaries and decide when and where you’ll engage a difficult person,
you can control much of the chaos. The only trick is to stick to your
guns and keep boundaries in place when the person tries to encroach upon
them, which they will.
5. They don’t die in the fight.
Smart
people know how important it is to live to fight another day,
especially when your foe is a toxic individual. In conflict, unchecked
emotion makes you dig your heels in and fight the kind of battle that
can leave you severely damaged. When you read and respond to your
emotions, you’re able to choose your battles wisely and only stand your
ground when the time is right.
6. They don't focus on problems -- only solutions.
Where
you focus your attention determines your emotional state. When you
fixate on the problems you’re facing, you create and prolong negative
emotions and stress. When you focus on actions to better yourself and
your circumstances, you create a sense of personal efficacy that
produces positive emotions and reduces stress.
When it comes to
toxic people, fixating on how crazy and difficult they are gives them
power over you. Quit thinking about how troubling your difficult person
is, and focus instead on how you're going to go about handling them.
This makes you more effective by putting you in control, and it will
reduce the amount of stress you experience when interacting with them.
7. They don’t forget.
Emotionally
intelligent people are quick to forgive, but that doesn’t mean that
they forget. Forgiveness requires letting go of what’s happened so that
you can move on. It doesn’t mean you’ll give a wrongdoer another chance.
Smart people are unwilling to be bogged down unnecessarily by others’
mistakes, so they let them go quickly and are assertive in protecting
themselves from future harm.
8. They squash negative self-talk.
Sometimes
you absorb the negativity of other people. There’s nothing wrong with
feeling bad about how someone is treating you, but your self-talk (the
thoughts you have about your feelings) can either intensify the
negativity or help you move past it. Negative self-talk is unrealistic,
unnecessary and self-defeating. It sends you into a downward emotional
spiral that is difficult to pull out of. You should avoid negative
self-talk at all costs.
9. They get some sleep.
I’ve
beaten this one to death over the years and can’t say enough about the
importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence and
managing your stress levels. When you sleep, your brain literally
recharges, so that you wake up alert and clear-headed. Your
self-control, attention and memory are all reduced when you don’t get
enough -- or the right kind -- of sleep. Sleep deprivation raises stress
hormone levels on its own, even without a stressor present. A good
night’s sleep makes you more positive, creative and proactive in your
approach to toxic people, giving you the perspective you need to deal
effectively with them.
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