How to Deal With Difficult People

Dealing with difficult people is never easy. You can't do this successfully unless you have and approach that enables you, to control what you can and eliminate that you cannot. You are in control of so much more than you realize when it comes to dealing with difficult people, and your emotional intelligence is the key to getting past the problems they create.

Step 1: Rise Above

Difficult people are so tough to deal with because their behavior is so irrational. Without question their behavior goes against reason, which begs the question: how did you allow yourself to get sucked into the mix.

The more 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.

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.

Step 2: Set 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 (Step 1) 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 set limits, 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.

Step 3: Talk About It

There’s nothing wrong with venting to family and friends about a difficult person, but the idea here is to use it as a means of moving forward. Venting is a great way to release tension and get some social support for your problems, but to mix things up and improve your situation, you need to tell the people that you vent to exactly what you’re doing about the person. Share your specific plans for Rising Above (Step 1) and Setting Boundaries (Step 2). This way, the people in your support system can give you feedback and guidance as you pursue these steps. They will be able to more easily see when your emotions are getting the better of you, and can help you to maintain a rational perspective. When it comes to boundaries, you’re going to find your support system asking a lot of great “what if” questions to help you consider new ways to set boundaries. The quality of this feedback will depend on getting a detailed account of what you’re trying to accomplish in dealing with the difficult person. If your support people don’t understand that you have a plan, they may just feed the problem by getting you riled up over how terrible it is that you’re stuck with a difficult person.

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 your problem person.