Dealing With Difficult People

During this one-day workshop, you will teach participants how to:

• Recognize how their own attitudes and actions impact others.
• Use new and effective techniques for dealing with difficult people.
• Use techniques for managing and dealing with anger.
• Develop coping strategies for dealing with difficult people and difficult situations.

Course Overview

• You will spend the first part of the day getting to know participants and discussing what will take place during the workshop. Students will also have an opportunity to identify their personal learning objectives.

Conflict as Communication

• This lecture will help participants define conflict. Participants will also explore how conflict is a very normal part of healthy relationships. To wrap up the session, they will complete a self-assessment to help them analyze how they currently handle conflict and how they might be able to improve.

Benefits of Confrontation

• This session will give participants a framework for deciding whether or not to become involved in a situation. Participants will also identify some benefits that may arise if they do decide to get involved.

Preventing Problems

• There are several key ways that we can prevent problems from occurring. These methods will be examined in a lecture and in small group work.

Emotional Intelligence

• Using emotional intelligence can help when dealing with difficult people. This session examines how managing your own behavior influences the outcome of these encounters.

Getting Focused

• If, as leaders, we are content to only deal with the surface issues, and we are afraid to dig and get at the deeper issues, we will not create a better workplace. This session will give participants some ways to get to the heart of a problem.

Managing Anger

• Too many people are angry! This session will give participants some guidelines for managing their anger, dealing with angry people, and using assertive anger.

Dealing with Problems

• In this session, participants will work in small groups to explore eight ways of dealing with problems.

The Three-Step Conflict Resolution Model

• During this session, we will look at a three-step process that can help participants resolve conflict. Participants will also have an opportunity to apply the model to a difficult situation.

Practice, Practice, Practice

• In this session, participants will role play a difficult situation using the scenario from their pre-assignment.

Changing Yourself

• Earlier we discussed how our attitudes and actions impact others. In this session, we will take a deeper look at how negative attitudes can cause negative interactions, and what we can do to turn those attitudes around.

Why People Do Not Always Do What They Are Supposed To

• There are a million possible answers to this question, but we will discuss the 10 most common reasons.

De-Stress Options to Use When Things Get Ugly

• To wrap up the workshop, we will share six de-stressing techniques that participants can use when things get difficult.

Workshop Wrap-Up

• At the end of the day, students will have an opportunity to ask questions and fill out an action plan.