How to Deal with Difficult People, 6th Edition

20If things don’t change they will stay the same

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change

Stephen Hawking

The four Cs in change

One of the biggest causes of workplace discontent, which can so often lead to perfectly normal people behaving in a difficult way, is change. It is unsettling. Gossip starts to take hold. People panic.

In fact there is a study conducted by management guru Michael Porter that shows in times of serious corporate change 18 per cent of top people jump ship. They are not going to wait around to see if they are going to keep their job, so they go and find another one. They are good and they know it.

In the early 1990s there was a management buzz-phrase, ‘change management’. I’ve never really understood the meaning of ...