10 Dealing with difficult people…the smart way!

I can hear murmurs that all this is very well, but how can anyone remain continuously benevolent and forgiving in this world… surely one has to keep harsh measures for bad persons, and not be uniformly benign. I have many things to say on this, but here let me share what I have learnt and developed after a lifetime of dealing with… DIFFICULT PEOPLE!

There are basically three ways of dealing with difficult people: aggression, assertion and avoidance. The instinctive reaction to people who get our goat is to retaliate, lash out, give as good as we get, pay them in their own coin, show them who’s not a pushover. The problem here is that we are not clear about our objectives… the end is not in view. People are not easy to change in their convictions, and the more aggressive we get, the more defensive and self-vindicating they are going to become (and the more vindictive, too, sometimes). One thing we can be assured about is that the closer we get involved with them, the more we are going to get sucked into their idiocy. We have to really be clear how much of our time and energy we want to put into trying to change someone else. We may try convincing them to a certain extent, but then we will have to back off, as further engagement can often prove costly for our own health and survival.

In most engagements in the world of living beings, there is a choice between flight and fight: “he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day”.  Animals often have ritualized jousts, which provide a winner without risking serious injury or disablement to either party. This is the story behind the cat’s nine lives.

In human affairs, too, avoidance is after a point the optimal policy. Difficult, vindictive, and misguided people are all round us, and the best we can do for ourselves is to leave them to live their own lives, to stew in their own juice, while we carry on with ours. We are not responsible for their lives! But we always leave a window open if they want to come around… we never, as far as human foibles will allow, slam the door in their face. The best result is achieved when we follow a consistent, perhaps one-sided, long-term policy of being ever prepared to forget and start afresh… this is also evolutionarily the most beneficial, as the chance of positive associations is always available, whereas if we shut off permanently, we lose the gains that might have been garnered from such collaborations.

This doesn’t apply just to bosses, but even to those ‘under’ you… never under-estimate the damage that can be done by the lowest of your ‘sub-ordinates’, or those who are now abjectly dependent on you, such as powerless children and those on the receiving end of your petty powers. So try to establish collaborative, supportive relationships in all directions.  Your aim would be to not give the world any vulnerable points for their hooks to catch hold of you and yank you around: whether it is your bosses, or your juniors, or your clients, or your family. The mantra will be ...avoid, avoid, avoid. Combined with the 20-80 rule (later!) and the rule of fives, this will help you increase your overall effectiveness, or at least reduce the factors conspiring to bring you down.

09 Building up your life’s credit balance

I like to think that each of us starts out with a certain credit balance, bestowed on us by dint of membership in the human race. As we grow and travel through life, we are constantly interacting with our fellow humans, other living things, the forces of nature, and negotiating with the Fates and the Furies… playing our percentages, juggling our few chances, giving and taking.

Each one of these interactions has the potential of adding to this balance… or of drawing it down. When we are very small, the human race looks on us with a bemused tolerance and affection, finding us charming and lovable, even when we gurgle or worse down their shirt fronts. We can safely keep taking at this stage in our lives, without drawing down much of the bank balance. As we grow, however, the community becomes less tolerant, more critical. If we persist in being childish, we will soon find our credit dwindling. At sixteen, the plainest Jill or Joe looks winsome and handsome, with all the promise of a lifetime ahead. Anyone can find admiration and romantic attachments at this age, a quirk of adaptation to propagate the species. Gradually, however, we find that this potential contracts, options grow ever smaller and fewer, and soon we have to start putting back into the bank by serving others, kowtowing to the community, conforming to the rules, and serving in our slots in society.

Children are one-sided consumers and demanders, but even they have to start replenishing the balance one day, if at least by making themselves less dependent on their families and more self-sufficient, and finally independent.

As we pass through our working and family life, we have a choice at every moment. Every meeting, every interaction, every discussion, can be the source of increasing and replenishing your balance of credit, or if you convert them into adversarial confrontations, arguments, or contests, you may well be drawing down the balance at every step. This is brought home in today’s web world by instant feedbacks that establish and grow your reputation in the community, no matter that you don’t actually come face to face. The question is, how do you replenish the balance, increase the credit,  and reduce the downdraft? How do you arrive at the later stages of your life with a huge credit balance to last you through your sunset years, when your capacity to add to it may be much less?

The answer is that you’ve got to put in, during the years of maximum productivity and influence. In many ways, this is no different from building up your pension fund! The more you let go, give away, or let go during the years of maximum activity, the less you will have to worry about at the later stages. The less you stand around for immediate recompense, the more the stock is going to grow, and the richer you are going to be in your years of need.