This document provides guidance on how to effectively work with difficult people and resolve conflicts. It discusses identifying conflict goals, developing skills like emotional awareness, analyzing issues, and using negotiation and mediation strategies. Key recommendations include staying calm, listening actively without judgment, understanding different perspectives, focusing on interests not positions, and seeking help from others if needed. The overall message is that resolving conflicts constructively requires reflection, communication, and finding mutually agreeable solutions.
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Negotiation is a continuing problem solving process. It’s getting people with both common and conflicting interest to come together to arrange or adjust their future relationship by making a joint decision.
Davidson Alumni Webinar - Tough ConversationsMark S. Young
The PPT slide-deck from our Dec 1, 2015 alumni webinar facilitated by Lory Fischler, an expert on navigating critical conversations in the workplace and in our lives.
Negotiating | A Practical and Principled ApproachMBA ASAP
Negotiation is a continuing problem solving process. It’s getting people with both common and conflicting interest to come together to arrange or adjust their future relationship by making a joint decision.
Listening To Learn presentation prepared for Wood Badge Course S5-420-17. Designed to be printed and used as a flip book for patrol presentation as Troop Guide.
Communication presentation prepared for Wood Badge Course S5-420-17. Designed to be printed and used as a flip book for patrol presentation as Troop Guide.
Elizabeth Alo is a Managing Partner of Vitalwork, a 22-year old local consulting company that specializes in organizational and workforce development. Elizabeth has a penchant for the link between desired business results and the corresponding quality of interactions among senior leaders, managers in the middle and customer-facing front-line employees. For eight years she has consulted with leaders in supporting themselves and employees to take on new ways of thinking and acting in times of change that optimize personal and group power, influence, and, most importantly, results. These measurable changes in behaviors are foundational to the achievement of goals and strategic objectives within the companies Elizabeth has consulted and facilitated developmental workshops.
Come hear Elizabeth as she speaks on the importance of handling Crucial Conversations well as a vital step in executing successful strategies and projects.
Tips on how to approach the process of negotiating with an emphasis on being rational, kind and even tempered. With so many ways to be led astray by ego and emotions during negotiations, this template helps us remember what is important and how to stay cool and focused.
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This slide deck is based on Chapter 2 of the the great book Getting to Yes: Separate the People from the Problem. Fun images help illustrate the insightful points made throughout this chapter.
Listening To Learn presentation prepared for Wood Badge Course S5-420-17. Designed to be printed and used as a flip book for patrol presentation as Troop Guide.
Communication presentation prepared for Wood Badge Course S5-420-17. Designed to be printed and used as a flip book for patrol presentation as Troop Guide.
Elizabeth Alo is a Managing Partner of Vitalwork, a 22-year old local consulting company that specializes in organizational and workforce development. Elizabeth has a penchant for the link between desired business results and the corresponding quality of interactions among senior leaders, managers in the middle and customer-facing front-line employees. For eight years she has consulted with leaders in supporting themselves and employees to take on new ways of thinking and acting in times of change that optimize personal and group power, influence, and, most importantly, results. These measurable changes in behaviors are foundational to the achievement of goals and strategic objectives within the companies Elizabeth has consulted and facilitated developmental workshops.
Come hear Elizabeth as she speaks on the importance of handling Crucial Conversations well as a vital step in executing successful strategies and projects.
Tips on how to approach the process of negotiating with an emphasis on being rational, kind and even tempered. With so many ways to be led astray by ego and emotions during negotiations, this template helps us remember what is important and how to stay cool and focused.
Negotiations: Separate the People from the ProblemJohn Cousins
This slide deck is based on Chapter 2 of the the great book Getting to Yes: Separate the People from the Problem. Fun images help illustrate the insightful points made throughout this chapter.
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Do you find yourself avoiding certain people? Or celebrating when that certain person calls in sick? This session will teach you some strategies on how to deal with difficult people instead of avoiding them. Presenter: DeAnne Heersche
Dealing with "Difficult" People: A Guide to Conflict ResolutionG&A Partners
G&A Partners presents a guide on dealing with those occasionally troublesome folks in your workplace.
As pressures in the workplace increase, many office professionals are finding there are more difficult people to deal with on the job as well as in our personal lives. Whether you have to handle a customer who shouts at you for doing your job or a team member who takes credit for your ideas, this unique session will show you how to stop falling victim to difficult people.
This training will help you recognize the effects of conflict, identify causes of conflict, deal with “difficult” personalities, communicate effectively to avoid conflict, and resolve and manage conflicts.
Need some more HR guidance? Visit us online at www.gnapartners.com. We can help.
This Presentations talks about knowing more about your personality, know more about different types of people that might be difficult. Finally, tips on how to deal with them.
Remember: You could be one of the difficult people so be fair :)
Agile Coaching - Giving And Receiving Feedback Jul14ajaysolucky
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Interpersonal Skills is intended to provide the basis for class discussion and relatively effective and ineffective situation of a management and personality developments . This slide can be use in modules on decision making, relationship of management, learning and performance.
The skills used by a person to properly interact with others. In the business domain,
the term generally refers to an employee's ability to get along with others while getting the job done.
Interpersonal skills include everything from communication and listening skills to attitude and deportment.
Good interpersonal skills are a requirement for many positions in an organization.
Emotional Intelligence (EI), the key to improving client building, existing relationships,
negotiation techniques and leadership skills, can best be taught, accessed, coached,
developed and enhanced by using improvisation techniques to support emotive learning.
Cognitive learning is less effective because it is knowledge‐based. As such, comprehending
the concepts of EI is not enough. Increasing one’s EI is like exercising a muscle rather than
learning more about a topic. It requires the appropriate action and reinforcement ‐‐ much
like lifting weights to develop stronger muscles rather than reading an exercise book.
This is a de-escalation type training. This would be helpful in a customer service environment where you need to use the right words in order to calm someone down or avoid escalating the call in the first place.
Being proactive means you have taken careful, thoughtful steps to choose the appropriate path; you're not just reacting impulsively to your environment.
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Empathy is essential quality everyone has to build up in order to make their communication more effective. We have to build up a genuine interest in people. People Skill is an avenues where we'll have to do something to improve our communication effectiveness. Try to place yourself in other person's shoes. Understand what others need, and modify your delivery in accordance to that. We'll have to shed our ego, perhaps.
2. Introduction
Here are the issues that will be covered:
•How to identify conflict management goals
•How to develop skills and strategies for working with difficult people
•Self-reflection
•Analysing issues
•Negotiation strategies
•Mediation
•Dispute resolution
3. Conflict
Us, them & self-reflection
Conflict begins: - remember the ‘us & them’
•people who oppose our ideas
•when we oppose others ideas
•people who annoy us or people who simply do not like us
•when we annoy other people or simply do like them
Maccoby and Studder identify five steps to managing conflict (source: Wikipedia):
Anticipate – Take time to obtain information that can lead to conflict
Prevent – Develop strategies before the conflict occurs
Identify – If it is interpersonal or procedural, move to quickly manage it
Manage – Remember that conflict is emotional
Resolve – React, without blame, and you will learn through dialogue
4. Conflict management
How to deal with issues before they become 'difficult’:
Analysing issues – Why might this become difficult?
•Inappropriate, aggressive, insulting behavior or language (sexist, racist, ageist etc)
•Consistently ignoring rules of the discussion
•What’s the issue: people working together that haven’t before, previous
misunderstandings, being ignored or over looked, people been upset or treated
disrespectfully
•Is this one person whose being ‘difficult’ or are there others
•Are there specific situations when the persons being ‘difficult’
•Can you change those situations
•Do you have all the details you need
•What rules do you have to regulate the behavior – what rules need to be agreed to stop
the behavior or difficulty
•What are the goals you need the conflict resolution to reach
•Be honest – is there anything you have, said or done which may have created the
‘situation’ – how can you change your behaviour or language to avoid conflict or difficult
situations
5. Conflict management tools (1)
How to develop skills and strategies for working with difficult people
The lead person to present and clarify the background of the conflict
Emotional awareness helps you:
•Understand what is really troubling other people
•Understand yourself, including what is really troubling you
•Stay motivated until the conflict is resolved
•Communicate clearly and effectively
•Attract and influence others
6. Conflict management tools (2)
Problem identification
i) Clearly explain your problem in terms of behaviour, consequences, and feelings.
•Use a specific incident to illustrate the expectations or standards violated.
•Stick to the facts, avoid drawing evaluative conclusions and attributing motives to the respondent.
ii) Persist until understood and encourage two-way discussion.
Restate your concerns or give additional examples.
• Avoid introducing additional issues or letting your frustration and emotions grow.
• Invite the respondent to ask questions and express another perspective.
iii) Manage the agenda carefully.
•Approach multiple problems, proceeding from simple to complex, easy to difficult, concrete to abstract.
•Conversely, don’t become fixed up on one issue. If you reach an impasse, expand the discussion to
increase the likelihood of an integrative outcome.
Solution
Make a request. Focus on things you share in common (principles, goals and constraints) as the basis for
recommending preferred alternatives.
7. Putting your conflict skills into action (1)
Getting the detail – speak to the person – assess if you need to do this with a
‘neutral’ person in the room
1.Stay calm, listen
Focus on them, not yourself
In conversations, I often lose my mind in my own thoughts. I get hung on what I’m going to say next or
random thoughts like, ‘How do I look?’, ‘I’m hungry’, ‘What should I do tonight?’
•The trick is to shift that attention and focus on the speaker.
•Give them your full attention.
•Be genuinely interested in them and what they have to say.
Here’s a quote from Dale Carnegie extracted from principle 4 of
“How to Win Friends and Influence People”
“Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.”
8. Putting your conflict skills into action (2)
Active listening - it’s easy to let your mind wander while someone is talking. It’s also
natural to focus on how you plan to respond to the speaker rather than giving your full
attention. Try active listening to shift focus on listening:
• Repeat what they are saying in your head, in your own words. Internalize the meaning of the
words.
• Summarize what you heard. A great listening technique involves rephrasing the speaker’s words
and repeating them back to them. This verifies that you understood what the speaker said, and also
gives the speaker a chance to clarify their thoughts. You can start the sentence with “So what I’m
hearing you say is” or “Are you saying that“.
• Look for the message – Look for key words. Don’t just listen with your ears, but also listen with
empathy. Connect with them. There are so much more said than just words alone. Try to ask
yourself, what is their point? Where are they coming from? What do they need? What they are saying
in words is just an expression, but there’s always an underlying message. Look for that core message.
9. Putting your conflict skills into action (3)
• Ask questions – try to clarify your understanding. People like questions, provided you are
conscious of when not to ask questions (for example, you don’t want to interrupt their train of
thought by jumping in with questions as they speak). This shows that you are listening and are
following them. Look for additional and related information. Some good probing sentence starters
are How? Why? For example, “How did it happen?” “And what was your reaction?” “Why did you
choose to leave?”
• Don’t make judgments – listen with compassion, openness and acceptance. In conversations, we
often think about refutes and counter-arguments as the other person speaks. Listen with openness
by recognizing that they are expressing themselves, and allow them the freedom to do that. Besides,
we don’t want to be judged when we are speaking, so why should we judge others?
• Don’t interrupt – let the speaker finish their thoughts. Don’t move on to what you’d like to say
until the speaker has finished talking. If you have something to say, bite your tongue and nod. Be
patient, wait for your turn. Remember how annoying it was when someone interrupted you? And
you lost your train of thought? Give others respect and allow them to finish.
10. Key points
Staying rational when working with a ‘difficult person’
• If you're required to respond to an ‘irrational outburst’, ask the antagonist what exactly she or he is
upset about, in order to show that you are interested in communicating rather than in arguing. The
burden of responsibility is now back on the antagonist.
• If you think the outburst was inappropriate BUT if there’s some truth in the persons complaint you
should also say so. You'll overcome your own impulse to jump into the fray by looking for that one
small fact about which the critic is correct—and then agreeing with that single point.
• You can more easily and tactfully defend yourself once the emotional heat has abated. It’s ok to
stand up for yourself by calmly agreeing on a specific error, but refuse to condone the ‘outburst’ or
inappropriate behavior.
11. Key points
•Offer to the ‘difficult’ person your best guess as to what he or she is feeling, and ask for feedback. "It
sounds like you're angry right now, and I'm sorry about that." This demonstrates a willingness to
understand the difficult person's frustration without blame or defensiveness.
•Resist the urge to fight to win the argument. Listening and asking questions leads others to their own
better conclusions.
Focus on what can you can take action on.
Whatever it is, acknowledge that the situation has already occurred. Rather than harp on what you
cannot change, focus on the actionable steps you can take to forward yourself in the situation
Self-reflection is a good thing. Don’t just concentrate on action points for the other person but also
focus on actions you can do to stop a difficult situation from happening.
12.
Other options
Ignore.
If you have already tried everything above and the person is still not being receptive, the best way
might be to just ignore. After all, you have already done all that you can within your means. Get on
your daily tasks and interface with the person only where needed but do so in a calm and polite
manner. Of course, this isn't feasible in cases where the person plays a critical role in your work -
which leads us to our last tip.
Get help from someone else.
Remember you can also seek help from your rep, community co-ordinator or from the Local Trust. If
you’ve tried everything else this approach can helps to create changes or smooth out a situation as it
brings in another perspective but also someone can create an objective and approach and remind you
and the other person of any policies or actions that need to be followed.
13. Other options
Other forms of conflict resolution
Dispute resolution generally refers to one of several different processes used to resolve
disputes between parties, including negotiation, mediation, arbitration...
Negotiation strategies
Negotiation: is dialogue between two people or more, intended to reach an understanding or
resolve a disagreement.
Separate the people from the problem.
1.Focus on interests, not positions.
2.Invent options for mutual gain, that is work together to create options that will satisfy both
parties.
3.Insist on using objective criteria for judging a proposed solution.
14. Other options
Other forms of conflict resolution (continued)
Mediation is a negotiation to resolve differences that is conducted by some impartial party.
Mediation is an informal dispute settlement process run by a trained third party, called a ‘mediator’.
Mediation is intended to bring two parties together working with a qualified mediator, or a local
authority mediation service or through a trusted person who is ‘neutral’ and has mediation skills
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and leading law firms, business and public sector.
http://www.cedr.com - jmunton@cedrsolve.com
Check your local authority, parish council, local library or go on line to find out if there is a free
mediation services in your areas.
15. Further reading
Psychology Today, ‘Dealing with difficult people’, a short on line article providing some
useful tactics and interesting insights on working with difficult people,
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200609/dealing-difficult-people
Kent Literacy, ‘Working with difficult people: seven types of difficult people’, - offers an
easy read and very brief description of seven types of difficult people,
http://literacy.kent.edu/salt_fork/work_people/7types.html
PR Daily.com, ‘12 productive ways of dealing with difficult people’ - offers some positive
strategies for working with difficult people
http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/12_productive_ways_to_deal_with_difficult_people_11680.as
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