11 Positive Ways to Deal with Negative People

By putting in just a little effort up-front, you can better deal with the difficult people in your life.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “The single most important ingredient of success is knowing how to get along with people.”

Of course, Roosevelt never met that annoying guy in accounting you have to deal with every week, did he? And he certainly didn’t have your in-laws.

Funny thing, it seems that even the folks we find particularly difficult to deal with have friends, spouses, and social lives. So it’s clear that someone is able to get along with them. Why not us? By putting in just a little effort up-front, by taking the high road, you can better deal with the difficult people in your life. Here’s how:

1.      Identify their negativity

Just what is it about them that you find so “difficult?” Think back to the original situation when you officially classified them as such. Make sure that your assessment is the result of a pattern of demonstrated behavior, and not the result of a single interaction upon which you’ve been focusing. Once you’re sure there’s a pattern, come up with a few examples
.

2.      Think about their overall goals

They may be difficult, but they’re still human. They have goals and objectives, and in most cases “being difficult” is not one of them. Consider what overall goals are driving their “difficult” behavior. Is that guy in accounting who annoyingly nags you for additional receipts just trying to drive you nuts, or does his pending promotion require that he collect flawlessly accurate documentation? Sometimes reflecting on the goals that affect a person’s “difficult” behavior can provide enough insight to make them tolerable.

3.      Consider their possible fears

We all have fears, even if we don’t realize what they are. Some folks fear not getting work done on time. Others fear criticism. Or they are afraid they’ll be taken advantage of. These fears impact our behavior, even to the point of being perceived as “difficult” to some folks. If you consider that your “difficult” person actually has some fears that drive them, you might just see that person in a different light.

4.      Observe their strengths

Perhaps the office assistant is “difficult” at times, but she’s a little easier to take when you realize that her natural affinity for details and organization actually makes your life easier in some ways. Or think about your “difficult” team leader whose confidence and assertiveness enables her to successfully negotiate a deadline extension on your behalf. What strengths does your “difficult” person bring to the table and how do those strengths provide value to the organization?

5.     Look at the “flip side” of those strengths

Our strengths are positive, right? Most of the time they are, but sometimes they can be over used—and an overextended strength can be at the root of your “difficult” person. For example, self-confidence is a desirable strength. But when it’s overdone, we see that same person as cocky. To better understand your “difficult” person, assess what is annoying you and look for the strength behind it.

6.      Figure out their motivators

As Dr. Phil might say, “What’s their currency?” Is maintaining a harmonious family top priority
Or are they mostly driven by career accomplishment? Does their competitiveness define them
Or is it most important to them that everyone just get along? Is what motivates them contributing
to what you’re assessing as being difficult?

7.      Note their reaction to stress

Apply enough stress, and you’ll see a person’s behaviors change. Consider if the “difficult” behaviors you’re seeing are a result of stressful situations. Someone who inspires enthusiasm in others may become glib or appear superficial when under a lot of stress. Under stress, a supportive, dependable team player can become detached, inflexible, and even stubborn.

8.      See their perspective

Perform all of the steps above, and you’ll likely have a pretty good idea of that “difficult” person’s perspective on the world. And seeing that perspective brings some “aha” moments. “Oh, that’s why he got so worked up when I didn’t reply immediately….” Now, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t still exhibiting difficult behaviors that you might need to address at some point, but you probably understand them better now.

9.      Consider your own behaviors

Now that you’ve dissected the “difficult” person, you must consider your own behaviors and how that person likely perceives them. It’s never fun to think that we might be contributing to the problem, but you must take a look at the possibility that perhaps they see you as “difficult.”

10.      Empathize

This step is easy if you’ve actually done each of the prior steps. Once you see things through another person’s perspective and understand their behaviors better, empathy seems to come more naturally.

11.  Speak their “language”

Armed with new insights about your “difficult” person, adapt your communication approach to better match their perspective on the world. If they value accuracy and high-standards, responding to them from that view shows respect to their feelings. Making this effort can help you head-off conflict and avoid triggering the “difficult” behaviors they’ve demonstrated in the past.

These 11 steps take a little effort. You may be questioning why you should have to do anything—after all, he’s the difficult one! Well, a very wise person—who I at one time considered particularly “difficult”—once told me that I had a choice: I could take the short-term pain or I could take the long-term pain.

There are three roads we can take when dealing with others. The low road, the middle road and the high road.

The Low road is treating others worse than they treat us.

The middle road is treating other the same as they treat us

The high road is treating others better than they treat us.

Take the high road because it’s the most fulfilling one.

To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, LMFT

Principal

P. S. Smart Development Inc. has an exceptional track record helping restaurants, stores, branches, distribution centers, food production facilities, and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength and the teamwork necessary for growth. Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

http://smartdevelopmentinc.com/

 

Choosing Your Attitude

Most of us believe our attitudes are caused directly by outside influences like unpleasant experiences or negative people. But while external pressures may trigger our feelings, we are the ones wearing those feelings like a suit of clothes. We can either be subservient to external events, few of which we have any control over, or we can take charge of our own response.

Choosing your attitude is not always putting on a happy face or feeling pressure to adopt the outlook that’s“officially” acceptable. Sometimes angry or sad are what’s called for. That’s why choosing your attitude is about being aware of what your attitude is, and that it does affect you and others. Once you are aware of the impact, you may view your attitude differently, even if the situation or person that upset you hasn’t changed. Then you can ask yourself, “Does my attitude help me or others? Is it helping me be the way I want to be?”

Choose your attitude asks only that you make your own choice and not try to pass it off on something or someone else. Once you accept that you are the only one who is choosing your attitude at this moment, you can decide whether to keep it or shape it into an attitude that’s more
satisfying. You control your attitude, not the other way around.

Choosing Your Attitude: The Three Skills

The three skills that will enable you to choose the right attitude on daily basis are self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-motivation Self-awareness is the cornerstone that supports all of the attitude management skills. The more we know about ourselves, the better we are able to control and choose what kind of behaviors we’ll display in the work setting. Without self-awareness our emotions can blind us and guide us to do things or to become people we really don’t want to be. If we are aware of our feelings and thoughts, we can choose how we will act or react in a given situation or to a certain person.

Self-regulation is about recognizing our emotions and moderating our responses so that we are able to reason well.When we are angry, we cannot make good decisions and often react inappropriately by blowing an incident out of proportion.We lose perspective. Conversely when we learn to manager our thoughts and emotions well, we become masters of mood and attitude management. As a result, we appear more levelheaded and trustworthy.

Once we are aware of our thoughts and feelings and have learned ways to manage them, the third step is to direct the power of our emotions towards a purpose, which will motivate and inspire us. Crew Members who are highly self-motivated realize that every job has its less enjoyable elements, but they plow ahead. They can envision reaching the goal, which gives
meaning to the mundane. Strongly self-motivated workers also accept change and are more flexible.

They have better attitudes, take more initiative and do balanced risk taking. But most of all, self-motivated employees persist toward goals, despite obstacles and setbacks.

Peter Mclees, LMFT

Principal

P. S. Smart Development Inc. has an exceptional track record helping restaurants, stores, branches, distribution centers, food production facilities, and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength and the teamwork necessary for growth. Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

http://smartdevelopmentinc.com/

A Profile in Positive Leadership

Jerry was the kind of guy you loved to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “IF I WERE ANY BETTER, I WOULD BE TWINS!”

He was unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason why we waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there listening to the employee and telling them how to look at the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive, up person all the time. How do you do it?”

Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, ‘Jerry you have two choices today. You can chose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.’ I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be victim, or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes complaining to me, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can help them create a solution, I choose to help them see the positive side of life.’

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested.

“Yes it is,” Jerry said “Life is about choices. When you cut away the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good or bad mood. If you find yourself with an attitude that is not what you want, you can choose another one. You can’t choose a positive attitude everyday. True. But you do choose some type of attitude everyday.

The bottom line: It’s your choice how to live your life.”

I reflected in what Jerry said. Soon thereafter I left the restaurant to go to an out of state university. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in the restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gun point by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my scars?” I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.

“The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door, Jerry replied. “Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.”

“Weren’t you scared, I asked?” “Absolutely,” Jerry replied.

Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, ‘He’s a dead man.’ I knew I needed to take action.”

 “What did you do?” I asked.

 

“Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘BULLETS!!’

 Over their laughter, I told them, “I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”

 Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his nurses and doctors, but also, because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have a choice to live fully.

Peter Mclees, LMFT

Principal

P. S. Smart Development Inc. has an exceptional track record helping restaurants, stores, branches, distribution centers, food production facilities, and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength and the teamwork necessary for growth. Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

http://smartdevelopmentinc.com/

Focus on communication fuels Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly describes how his company’s communication strategy keeps employees smiling.

When Gary Kelly took over as CEO of Southwest Airlines in 2004, he had a very clear vision of what he wanted his senior leadership to do: communicate more effectively and work better as a team. To do this, the company had to create an overarching program that would inform all of its communication efforts.

It took more than 30 years for Southwest Airlines to articulate its values to employees, but the company’s mission statement and objectives are now firmly in place. Employees have a good idea of where the company is headed, and how they fit into those goals as individuals.

But how does a Fortune 500 company ensure that every employee—from the corner office to the runway—is living the “Southwest Way” as they call it? At recent a leadership summit, Kelly told a room of more than 300 corporate communicators that it starts with caring.

Southwest’s mission starts with customer service, and its approach is simple: They genuinely care about their employees, who, in turn, will hopefully be inspired to treat customers accordingly. “And what is it that makes for a strong relationship with people?” says Kelly. “It’s communication.” Of course, “communication” is just a word—the content of the message must be compelling, and it must come from the right source.

“I think (communication) is most effective if it includes top management,” he says. “If you have middle management that’s trying to carry a message, it’s going to be inconsistent from one group to the next.” Kelly says Southwest’s top-down communication is carried out through a collaborative effort between him and the company’s communications team.

During the past decade the entire airline industry has been faced with unprecedented challenges that stem mainly from 9/11 and rising oil prices. Therefore, says Kelly, “The challenges today, from a communications perspective, are as dramatic as they have ever been.”

Listening to the ideas and concerns of employees becomes paramount to effective communication. But listening is only half of the equation. Following the lead of the emerging forms of social media, communication is a participatory game. “It’s a constant conversation,” says Kelly, “and hopefully a very intimate relationship. That’s where our employees get engaged. If they know what’s going on, and they know why we’re doing things, typically they’ll get on board.”

And as long as Kelly can point to corporate mission statement and objectives as the reason why they take on certain initiatives, it’s easy to see why so many Southwest employees are on board.

Gary Kelly explains the Southwest Airlines’ mission: The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of customer service. “That is the highest aspiration that we have. First and foremost, we want to be a great customer service company.” Delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, personal pride and company spirit. “A lot of customers don’t need the personal interaction, and that’s why Southwest.com is one of the most popular travel sites in the world. But we have to be there for our customers in person when they need us there in person. This is a very straightforward, long-lasting set of words in our mission statement.” To provide our employees with a stable work environment with an equal opportunity for learning and personal growth, encouraging creativity and innovation, and providing them the same concern, respect and caring attitude that they’re expected to share externally with every customer. “It’s very clear: We put customers first, but then we really talk about our employees. There’s some tangible evidence as to how we’ve treated our employees over the years. We’ve never had a furlough at Southwest Airlines. We’ve never had a layoff. We’ve never had a pay cut—even after 9/11. We are highly regarded as a company in many different ways: great service, strong financials and 34 years of   profitability. But the thing we’re most proud of is that we’ve been able to take care of each other. Those are things I hope will be everlasting at this company because they go hand in hand.”

 To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, Principal

P. S. Smart Development Inc. has an exceptional track record helping restaurants, stores, branches, distribution centers, food production facilities, and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength and the teamwork necessary for growth. Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

http://smartdevelopmentinc.com/

Focus on communication fuels Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly describes how his company’s communication strategy keeps employees smiling.

When Gary Kelly took over as CEO of Southwest Airlines in 2004, he had a very clear vision of what he wanted his senior leadership to do: communicate more effectively and work better as a team. To do this, the company had to create an overarching program that would inform all of its communication efforts.

It took more than 30 years for Southwest Airlines to articulate its values to employees, but the company’s mission statement and objectives are now firmly in place. Employees have a good idea of where the company is headed, and how they fit into those goals as individuals.

But how does a Fortune 500 company ensure that every employee—from the corner office to the runway—is living the “Southwest Way” as they call it? At recent a leadership summit, Kelly told a room of more than 300 corporate communicators that it starts with caring.

Southwest’s mission starts with customer service, and its approach is simple: They genuinely care about their employees, who, in turn, will hopefully be inspired to treat customers accordingly. “And what is it that makes for a strong relationship with people?” says Kelly. “It’s communication.” Of course, “communication” is just a word—the content of the message must be compelling, and it must come from the right source.

“I think (communication) is most effective if it includes top management,” he says. “If you have middle management that’s trying to carry a message, it’s going to be inconsistent from one group to the next.” Kelly says Southwest’s top-down communication is carried out through a collaborative effort between him and the company’s communications team.

During the past decade the entire airline industry has been faced with unprecedented challenges that stem mainly from 9/11 and rising oil prices. Therefore, says Kelly, “The challenges today, from a communications perspective, are as dramatic as they have ever been.”

Listening to the ideas and concerns of employees becomes paramount to effective communication. But listening is only half of the equation. Following the lead of the emerging forms of social media, communication is a participatory game. “It’s a constant conversation,” says Kelly, “and hopefully a very intimate relationship. That’s where our employees get engaged. If they know what’s going on, and they know why we’re doing things, typically they’ll get on board.”

And as long as Kelly can point to corporate mission statement and objectives as the reason why they take on certain initiatives, it’s easy to see why so many Southwest employees are on board.

Gary Kelly explains the Southwest Airlines’ mission: The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of customer service. “That is the highest aspiration that we have. First and foremost, we want to be a great customer service company.” Delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, personal pride and company spirit. “A lot of customers don’t need the personal interaction, and that’s why Southwest.com is one of the most popular travel sites in the world. But we have to be there for our customers in person when they need us there in person. This is a very straightforward, long-lasting set of words in our mission statement.” To provide our employees with a stable work environment with an equal opportunity for learning and personal growth, encouraging creativity and innovation, and providing them the same concern, respect and caring attitude that they’re expected to share externally with every customer. “It’s very clear: We put customers first, but then we really talk about our employees. There’s some tangible evidence as to how we’ve treated our employees over the years. We’ve never had a furlough at Southwest Airlines. We’ve never had a layoff. We’ve never had a pay cut—even after 9/11. We are highly regarded as a company in many different ways: great service, strong financials and 34 years of profitability. But the thing we’re most proud of is that we’ve been able to take care of each other. Those are things I hope will be everlasting at this company because they go hand in hand.”

 To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, Principal

P. S. Smart Development Inc. has an exceptional track record helping restaurants, stores, branches, distribution centers, food production facilities, and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength and the teamwork necessary for growth. Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

http://smartdevelopmentinc.com/