Your Own Terms

8Power Moves for Handling Difficult People

In this chapter, I want to open a window onto a world where difficult people don’t exist. They may appear difficult when you encounter them, but being hard to deal with is not really who they are inside. It will help if you think of every person with whom you do business in this way.

People become difficult because they think these behaviors will get them what they want, or prevent what they don’t want from happening. Surprisingly, there are only three types of difficult people. (There are people whose difficult behavior is the result of mental illness or addiction. Such behavior is not a choice. In such cases, alert your supervisor or Human Resources Department.) And there are just four techniques for ...