Source and Credit
Published on March 6, 2018
Dr. Travis Bradberry
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% 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They use their support system. It’s tempting,
yet entirely ineffective, to attempt tackling everything by yourself. To deal
with toxic people, you need to recognize the weaknesses in your approach
to them. This means tapping into your support system to gain perspective on a
challenging person. Everyone has someone at work and/or outside work who is on
their team, rooting for them, and ready to help them get the best from a
difficult situation. Identify these individuals in your life and make an effort
to seek their insight and assistance when you need it. Something as simple as
explaining the situation can lead to a new perspective. Most of the time, other
people can see a solution that you can’t because they are not as emotionally
invested in the situation.
Bringing It All Together
Before you get this system to work brilliantly, you’re going
to have to pass some tests. Most of the time, you will find yourself tested by
touchy interactions with problem people. Thankfully, the plasticity of the
brain allows it to mold and change as you practice new behaviors, even when you
fail. Implementing these healthy, stress-relieving techniques for dealing with
difficult people will train your brain to handle stress more effectively and
decrease the likelihood of ill effects.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Travis Bradberry is the award-winning co-author of the
#1 bestselling book,
Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the
cofounder of
TalentSmart,
the world's leading provider of
emotional intelligence
tests,
emotional
intelligence training, and
emotional intelligence certification, serving more than 75%
of Fortune 500 companies. His bestselling books have been translated into 25
languages and are available in more than 150 countries. Dr. Bradberry has
written for, or been covered by,
Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes,
Fast Company, Inc., USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post,
and
The Harvard Business Review.
