Category: Dealing with difficult people

For years our best-selling workshop was dealing with difficult people. Then along came Covid-19. And something significant happened: working from home meant that the difficult colleagues you’d been encountering in the office Monday to Friday were suddenly no longer such a challenge. Why? Because they were in their homes and you were in yours. Put simply out of sight very often meant out of mind. Which was good for your mental health and well being. But bad for our business!

Now, however, as social distancing measures are eased and people are heading back to the office we’ve noticed that interest in our dealing with difficult people training is picking up. And we’re hearing that in some cases people’s behaviour is getting even more challenging than before – perhaps because of the stresses and strains of the last year or so.

So our dealing with difficult people guru, Sandy Keating, has been busy authoring a comprehensive, self-guided online course. At just £19.99 we reckon it’s great value for money. Just click the find out more button to look at the course content and to see a free preview of Sandy in action.

Prefer to sit an interactive, trainer-led session or want to book an in-house workshop for a group of colleagues? Then click here.

People are getting angrier. Or certainly less reasonable. That’s what our clients are telling us as we travel across Britain delivering our dealing with difficult people training. So why? In the local government sector (and others) it’s probably linked to a decade of austerity which has led to services being reduced or withdrawn altogether and service users getting frustrated as a result. It’s also down, I’d suggest, to the general coarsening of public discourse fuelled, if not sparked, by Brexit. People hear our so-called leaders slinging insults at one another across the floor of the House of Commons and elsewhere and they, quite understandably, follow suit. After all that’s how leadership works isn’t it? Leaders lead. The rest of us follow. Leading by bad example as it were.

Social media hasn’t helped either. Facebook, Twitter et al have led us to believe (wrongly) that we can get pretty much instant gratification. Instant likes. Instant thumbs ups. Instant responses to our problems. But so many sectors don’t run at the same dizzying speed. Complain on Twitter about your local authority in just seconds, then sit back and watch your blood pressure rise as the complaint takes days, weeks or even months to resolve.

All of which means there are more difficult people to deal with numerically and there are more difficult people to deal with behaviourally. So pity the poor people at the other end of the line getting sworn at, threatened and generally mistreated.

And I should add that frustration doesn’t just lead to anger. Sometimes it leads to tears. Callers are crying out for help – literally. Both, in their different ways, are hugely challenging for call handlers who, if they’re not managed properly, can suffer what’s called vicarious traumatisation a result. Heck, it can even lead to mental health issues if not properly addressed. Sad, mad and bad callers lead potentially to sad, mad and bad call handlers!

At ACM Training we equip call handlers with a range of tools to deal with difficult people and challenging behaviour. And we help them deal with the impact it can have on them personally and professionally so they can avoid the attendant stress and potential burnout. Here’s a list of call handling tips we drew up with the help of delegates who attended a series of short workshops at a local authority in the North West of England.

1. Don’t interrupt them in full flow – it’ll only make matters worse.
2. Remember angry callers are a bit like fireworks – they’ll fizzle out eventually and that’s the time to interject.
3. Fireworks can flare up again.
4. Try to establish why they are angry – by listening carefully and asking the right questions
5. Agree with them – it can defuse an awkward situation, even if you only agree with a narrow part of what they’re saying.
6. Say sorry – it costs nothing and, phrased carefully, isn’t an admission of guilt or wrongdoing.
7. Concede some ground or stand together on the common ground to avoid shouting across the gulf of your differences.
8. Don’t state the obvious – it antagonises angry callers.
9. Don’t promise the undeliverable in the hope that it’ll satisfy them – they’ll see through your ruse.
10. Make the most of what you can offer.
11. Listen. You’ve got two ears and one mouth – use them in about that proportion!
12. Interject regularly with little noises (uh, oh, I see, yes etc) to let them know you’re still listening.
13. Remember their anger may be perfectly reasonable in the circumstances.
14. Try not to take it personally – it’s not you they’re angry with but the situation or even themselves.
15. Keep your eye on the bigger picture – they may have or need vital information.
16. Set ground rules as soon as you reasonably can to help reduce/manage expectation and heighten appreciation.
17. Empathise by trying to picture yourself in their situation.
18. Sweet reason – try explaining why you need what you need from them or why you can’t help.
19. Perspective – help them see the bigger picture and that in the scheme of things their circumstances aren’t so bad after all (assuming they aren’t!).
20. Don’t tell them to calm down – it’ll probably have the opposite effect.
21. Instead get them to do something practical – in concentrating on the task in hand they’ll be diverted from their anger which often springs from a feeling of impotence and helplessness.
22. Remain calm yourself (or at the very least try to sound calm). If you respond to anger with anger the call will quickly descend in a downward spiral. Speak deliberately and clearly (not too slow because it can be read as patronising) and you’ll find there’s a chance they’ll mirror your demeanour and calm down themselves.
23. Abusive or threatening calls should not and are not tolerated in everyday call handling and it is perfectly acceptable to terminate such a call if the abuse continues after an initial warning. However, in a genuine emergency there may need to be more flexibility and tolerance.
24. Avoid burn out by taking frequent breaks and have a chance to offload any personal stress onto colleagues and/or supervisors. Remember a problem shared really is a problem halved.

[product id=”2375″]

1. Try to stick to facts, not feelings when communicating with a difficult person.
2. Focus on the main issues that need solving, rather than any minor ones. If you can resolve the big ones the small ones often turn out to be inconsequential or resolve themselves anyway.
3. Your stomach may be churning and your mind in turmoil but it’s better if you can get your points across in an unemotional way.
4. Agree to disagree, at least temporarily, because it’s better than arguing. Putting aside your differences allows progress.
5. Resist the temptation to argue, shout or swear – whatever the provocation. Your point may be right so why undermine it by doing something wrong?
6. Make the most of anything you agree onso that you can stand shoulder-to-shoulder and not shout across the vast gulf of what you disagree on.
7. Separate issues from people– things can become very personal, very quickly.
8. Easier said than done, but don’t take things personally. Developing self-belief as a part of your Emotional Intelligence is a good long term strategy.
9. Say ‘no’ when you mean ‘no’ rather than ‘yes!’ You may think this will placate a difficult person – believe me it won’t. All the ‘yeses’ will do is contribute to unrealistic expectations.
10. Finally it’s worth bearing in mind that we can’t change other people’s behaviour. We can only change our behaviour or our view of their behaviour.

Sandy’s been running ACM Training’s none-too-creatively named Dealing With Difficult People workshop for more than 20 years now and demand for it shows no sign of abating – which is a pity because difficult behaviour – whether it’s from colleagues, friends or family – causes untold pain and suffering to the victims, makes office life miserable and does nothing for productivity or health and well-being. The course is run publicly in London, Manchester and Bristol and often has discount places available from just £99 per person.

[product sku=”wpid=13″]

Beyond Boris’s inelegant turd-polishing outburst exactlywhat went on behind the heavy doors and high windows of Chequers during the Cabinet’s Brexit awayday negotiations will be kept secret under the Thirty Year Rule. And by the time the minutes are released to the National Archive Brexit may have been such an unalloyed success/disaster (delete depending on your own disposition) that only the nerdiest constitutional historians pore over them. But we don’t have to wait until 2048 to find out because ACM Training’s mediation and negotiation techniques trainer, Sandy Keating, has imagined,in her inimitable Australian way, how the discussions might have been handled…

Even before the ministerial limousines started sweeping down the narrow Buckinghamshire lanes, the most eagle-eyed hacks would have noticed an Office Depot van turn into the Chequers’ driveway. In the back a stack of flipchart pads and a dozen or so boxes of fat felt pens. You really can’t negotiate without these tools of the trade. Oh, and Post It notes. Everybody loves Post It notes although, because this was a Conservative get together, the driver was told in no uncertain terms not to bring any of those pinko lefty ones. Or orange ones for that matter because the colour would remind them too much of Nick Clegg. In fact, the only exception to the fifty shades of blue rule was to be several rolls of crimson sticky tape to mark out those uncrossable red lines.

Joking aside, the language you use in negotiation is important. All this talk of red lines is incendiary. It’s perfectly acceptable to make clear you have a position that would be difficult or impossible to give way on. But you must articulate it in an even-tempered way. Cool heads and dispassionate language are, or at least should be, the order of the day. Because, of course, once tempers flare and people start taking things personally positions tend to become entrenched.

When this happens and people are deadlocked I suggest both (or more) parties work separarely in break out groups and list what they want – which is where those flipcharts and pens come in. Then I ask them, in discussion, to put that list in order of importance. The items at the top will necessarily be the things they’re not prepared to give up. But in order to keep those things maybe they are prepared – willing even – to give way on some of the items towards the bottom of the list.

It may seem very old fashioned in this age of tablets and smarphones but actually writing stuff down – making a mark on a piece of paper – is a penny drop moment for so many of the people I’ve trained to negotiate and mediate. When the sides come back together to compare and contrast notes it’s almost always easier to see (literally) the negotiation in terms of WIN-WIN-lose-lose rather than WIN-LOSE. What’s the difference? Well I’ve used upper and lower case letters to emphasise that in order for both sides to win big they both have to lose small – rather than one side winning big at the expense of the other losing big.

The challenge with the Brexit negotiations at a UK-EU level is that one side at least doesn’t seem to know what it wants. Perhaps there weren’t enough flips charts in the back of that van. Possibly they forgot to order enough BluTack. Or, more likely, the caretaker at Chequers wouldn’t let them stick it on the antique wallpaper. That’ll be it. We’re coming unstuck literally and metaphorically.

[product sku=”wpid=59″]

We’re always banging on about the value of training at ACM. How it’s a great way of increasing productivity. Boosting loyalty. An investment that pays dividends…

But as a training company we would say that wouldn’t we?! So it’s great when other people say exactly the same and validate our thinking. Here’s what a French academic had to say about the value of training on the PM programme on BBC Radio 4 recently. And it’s worth bearing in mind before you listen that productivity in France is way higher than in the UK. No coincidence.