Difficult People Video
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In this video on ‘Dealing with Difficult People’ Mark Tyrrell starts by discussing the quote from John-Paul Sartre “Hell is other people”, which of course is a joke, but contains a nugget of truth as does much dark humour. He continues to talk about how much difficult behaviour is driven by missing primal needs, such as the need for attention, and how spotting this and understanding it can make difficult people much easier to deal with.
Mark then goes on to describe an experience from his own life where he had to deal with a difficult sound engineer, and what he said to get round this man’s need for status. He uses this example to illustrate how a more subtle approach can be helpful when dealing with difficult people.
Avoiding taking difficult behaviour personally can help us remain calm and so give us the objectivity to deal with it more effectively and elegantly, and hypnotic rehearsal techniques can be useful in preparing ourselves to do this. Combining this with trying to understand what need the difficult behaviour is trying to meet gives us a way forward in navigating difficult behaviour in everyday life.
Transcript of Dealing with Difficult People video
The French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre once famously said, “Hell is other people.” Now, he may have been short of a few laughs at the time when he said this and it may be a bit of an exaggeration, but sometimes it can feel like that when you’re exposed to certain types of people whose behaviour can be…challenging, shall we say? Whether they’re extremely moody, very negative and pessimistic - they leak their negativity all over you, whether they’re very critical or bullying or controlling, difficult people - or difficult behaviour - can come in many different forms.
I’m reminded of the story about Milton Erickson, the great hypnotherapist. When he was a boy growing up in Nevada on the farm, his father was struggling to get this great big cow into a shed. The father was pushing the cow and the cow was pushing back the other way.
And the young Erickson went up to his father and said, “I bet I can move that cow into the shed!”
His father looked at him rather doubtfully, but young Erickson, rather than pushing the cow, went up behind the cow and he pulled its tail. And now, in order to resist having its tail pulled, the cow walked into the shed.
What has this got to do with dealing with difficult people? Difficult behaviour is really driven by a need. In order to deal with difficult behaviour, we have to be calm enough to not take it personally, to detach, to see the bigger picture of what’s going on.
I was working in a media centre in Bristol once, and I wanted to audio-record the lecture that I was giving. But I knew that the sound engineer in this particular place could be quite difficult; things were always a ‘problem’. You’d ask for something and he’d always say, “Well, you can’t do that.”
So I thought, “Well, I don’t want to waste time.” Because eventually, he’d get round to doing it anyway, but there’d be this big argument about why he couldn’t do it, and eventually he’d be able to do it. I think the real reason for this was status; it was his domain and he didn’t want to be ordered around, which was fair enough. So that was the need he was, I think, really trying to meet.
So I said - did the old Erickson thing - I said very loudly (so that he could hear) to my colleague, “You know, it’s a real shame that they’re not able to audio-record this lecture - that they don’t have the facility in this particular place to record this lecture!”
Quicker than it takes time to tell, of course, this guy had set up the sound recording equipment. Because who was I to say that he couldn’t do that? Once we understand the real driving force behind someone’s negativity, their controlling-ness, whatever it might be, then we can - like judo or jujutsu - rather than pushing back, we can pull when they push and push when they pull; so we’re going in the same direction, using their energy.
Two things, here:
Staying calm enough to see the bigger picture and not take it personally, so we don’t just get into arguments with people, get upset, or have our self-esteem damaged, but we actually stand back and see the bigger picture. We can use hypnosis to do this, to rehearse dealing with these people.
And the other thing is to actually think about, “What need is this person trying to meet through their difficult behaviour?” Someone who’s always over-controlling will tend to feel a lack of control and that’s what they’re trying to meet. Somebody who’s very pessimistic will perhaps feel as if they’re ‘covering all the bases’; they don’t want to be disappointed by being too optimistic. With a very pessimistic person, sometimes if you become more pessimistic than they are, they’ll go the other way - they’ll start being optimistic, because they want to inhabit a different viewpoint to you.
So all this can seem very, very complicated, but it’s not. If you really think about and look at some of the articles under this section on how to deal with difficult people, actually it does become a surmountable challenge rather than just one of life’s great pains.
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