Communicating with Difficult People - Literature review Example

COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS Communicating with Difficult People 1. Introduction Difficult people are everywhere. They can be found in the workplace, school, restaurant, shopping malls, and in almost all places where there is people. Encountering this unique type of people can be challenging since they can drain your patience and affect your communication skills. This is because they are often negative, controlling, intractable, and simply difficult to deal with. However, since we cannot always avoid them, we have to react with special coping skills. Communicating with difficult people is not necessarily a problem because they are things we can do to make our communication and interaction with this type of people work for our advantage. The first section discusses some of the problems encountered during training when attempting to communicate with difficult people. The next section contains an analysis of the problem using interpersonal communication theories, concept, and perspective. Finally, presented in the last two sections are set recommendations on how to improve communication with difficult people and conclusion. 2. Communicating with difficult people during training It is probably true that different people have different style of communication and during the training there were some people in the group that is hard to communicate. For instance, fellow trainees who belong to my group always talk in long detailed paragraphs just to express a very simple thought. In contrast female trainees who also belong to our group often answer my questions in one sentence or less. Whenever a question is asked, her reply is so short and difficult then she will quickly withdraw, turn around, and leave. However, compared to the other two, the third person in the group, a seemingly loud arrogant attention-seeker frustrate me all the time as he often boast his skill and talent. I find these type of people difficult to communicate since most the time, I am not getting the answers I want. 3. Analysis of the Problem Communication is part of people’s lives because anything we do involves communication (Hartley 1999, p.17). However, although people usually enjoy interaction with others, it can sometimes be problematic particularly when we are unable to connect meaningfully (Dickson 2004, p.1). According to Winbolt (2002, p.1) some people with difficult behaviour can affect other people in many ways. For instance, difficult people can intimidate others because they act and speak arrogantly as if they know more thus nobody want to speak up. At work, an employee with difficult behaviour can make an exasperated colleague resign as the later feels hopeless to try and improve his or her relationship with the former. In addition, difficult people not only can affect an individual’s feelings but can be a serious health hazard to others. To avoid the effects of difficult of people, one must understand the forces behind their behaviour, what compel them to be difficult? In Brinkman & Kirschner (2003, p.8), these type of people were identified and there are ten specific behaviour patterns that categorize them. However, there is one specific difficult person that can be hard to communicate with – the Know-It-All. This type of people according to Brinkman & Kirchner (2003, p.1), are persons who seems to know almost everything and they often want everyone to hear what he knows but usually not interested in what others are going to say. For this type of difficult people, ideas of other people are not important since they often see them as faulty and therefore not worth their time. Moreover, they are seldom in doubt about their judgements and often have low or no tolerance for correcting their mistake no matter what others say. For this reason, they are typically not interested in clarifying and answering questions thrown at them and usually utter few words to make others stop inquiring. Another type of difficult people that is probably related to one member of our group is the “Nothing Person”. This type of person often reserve their thoughts, suppress their answers, and unwilling to give feedback (verbal or non-verbal) thus questions thrown to this people often gets no reply or reaction. One interesting explanation given by Brinkman & Kirschner (2003, p.13) about the unique behaviour of difficult people is that difficult people often find comfort doing what they do. People have varying behaviour. Some are loud, some are relatively silent shy, some are arrogant, and some are shy. Every action or behaviour has an objective to fulfil and therefore a person with difficult behaviour is doing what appears to him as the most appropriate action at the time. For instance, a difficult person according to Cole (2002, p.275) typically release their feelings in details and therefore easy to understand and filter whatever those that are detrimental to emotion and personal well-being. 4. Recommendations Interpersonal communication in simple terms is the process where people share and exchange verbal or non-verbal messages and therefore necessary that at least two people contribute (Dickson 2003, p.12). When we encounter difficult people particularly those that has some unique way of communicating, the sharing and exchange of messages may not happen as we normally expect. According to Dickson (2003, p.13), communicators in the process of communication are indispensable thus communication that goes only in one direction is not good communication. Dealing with or communicating with difficult people therefore often result to one way relationship and producing nothing but discomfort and hatred on the part of the speaker. “Objective language can be your best friend” (Benjamin 2007, p.4) and probably using it to communicate with difficult people can help get the right response. Brinkman & Kirschner (2003, p.3) suggested that when somebody encounter someone with this type of behaviour, the best thing to do is to “vote with your feet” or walk away from that person (Brinkman & Kirschner (2003, p.3). This is because it is useless to deal with or try to resolve anything with this type of person. However, this approach may not be feasible all the time because in real-life situation, this person may be your boss or someone in your team. For this kind of situation, it may best to adapt the “Change Your Attitude” option particularly when the person you are trying to avoid is one that you have to deal with all the time. Brickman & Kirschner (2003, p.3) suggest that you learn to see the person with difficult behaviour differently. For instance, dealing with a “Know-It-All” type, one may need to go along with him and enjoy his or her company. This may include listening to the person in way that you do not have to absorb everything and relax as if no irritating situation is happening. According to Lilley (2002, p.2), nice people are not always the one we normally expect because some of them have different backgrounds than us. For instance, a person’s cultural belief, education, perspectives, and ambitions can make them a little different from us but they are not necessarily bad. In other words, they think and act in a different way but they can still be pleasant and decent people. It may be therefore helpful to avoid taking these people’s behaviour personally and try to see the encounter in a positive way. For instance, think about the benefits of the encounter or consider the encounter a challenge that you want to win. Keeping our emotions under control has its benefits since in reality we need other people. Dealing or communicating with difficult people is often unavoidable because they are everywhere, in school, at work, in our homes, and so on. According to Lundin et al. (2008, p.18), it is important to get the real meaning of people’s words or actions because these can affect our judgement and response. Moreover, being hurt with other person’s word or actions does not necessarily imply that it’s intentional and the other person hates you or trying to hurt your feelings. For instance, your supervisor may have raised his or her voice when you submitted a wrong report but the intention was to make you more serious in your work rather than hurt your feelings. Although it is possible that their may be some personal feelings involve, the most likely reason is business. Good communication involves recognizing who you are talking to or about knowing what his or her values and hopes are (Nazarko 2000, p.13). According to West & Turner (p.51), we are likely to encounter problems when we stereotype people. For instance, when we perceived that men do not emotions, older people and women are weak, politicians are corrupt, or disabled people are sensitive. In similar way, we do create communication problems when we pre-empt that a certain type of person like a “Know-It-All” will always behave in a certain manner because they belong to certain group of people- the difficult group. Perceiving people this way create communication problems because we are over simplifying the intricate process of perception. This means we are being overwhelmed by our negative thoughts that we tend to treat people unfairly (West & Turner 2008, p.51). How we relate to people is very important and we must take control of our communication in any given situation because one of the reasons why some irritating situation gets out of hand is because we avoid people with inappropriate behaviour (Frailey & Katz 1988, p. 272). There are a number of ways to deal with conversational or communication problems and these involve understanding which response is more appropriate (Cupach & Spitzberg 1994, p.154). As mentioned earlier, there seems to be no choice but to deal with difficult people and the best possible solution to the problem is to learn to deal with them effectively. Although it is likely to work with other types of difficult people, using objective language may not work in extreme situation. For instance, it may not yield any benefit if you are communicating with a “Nothing Person” whom by nature has no intention of communicating back. Avoiding or “voting with your feet” in practice will likely solve nothing and probably will even make matters worse if the difficult person is someone that can influence your career or someone that can negatively affect the outcome of your activities. Avoiding stereotyping and seeing the person with difficult behaviour differently may help ease the tension. After all, these people as discussed earlier are not necessarily bad or unacceptable and may have other legitimate reasons for their behaviour. They may be equally generous and understanding like other people you like. For instance, the upbringing of a person in the group may be entirely different from the rest and he or she is also confused and undergoing a period of adjustment. Setting aside our emotions in certain situation can help us understand the real meaning of difficult people’s actions and because anger and disappointment can twist our good judgement, appreciating the nature of the person can bring more benefits than avoiding him. What a person need is interpersonal communication skills. The one that does not pre-empt or characterize a person to the group he belongs and overcomes negative thoughts. According to Carter & Presnell (1994, p.3) good interpersonal communication is not just a matter of adapting to social objectives but realizing self-fulfilment. These include avoiding the effects of isolation, loss of confidence, and, antagonism. In general, it may be appropriate to recommended that people having difficulty communicating with difficult people should learn good interpersonal communication skills. Good interpersonal communication can contribute to different positive changes such as a person’s emotional situation or enhance the level of satisfaction he is getting from social interaction. Typically, whenever a person fails to achieve meaningful conversation, isolation and sadness occurs. For this reason, a person’s interpersonal communication skills should be capable of dealing with difficult people to avoid stress and achieve a higher level of satisfaction in life. Moreover, poor interpersonal communication skill often results to conflict (Stroman et al. 2008, p. 561). For example, a perceived difficult person may be confused or do not understand your statements or the reason why your making such statement. Avoiding difficult people or staying away from any encounter is definitely not a viable option for the simple reason that we need these people regardless of difficulty. It is better if a person encountering communication problems with difficult people to think about the behaviour rather than the person because nobody can force a person to alter his behaviour (Cole 2002, p.276). Difficult people won’t change on their own” (Axelrod & Holtje 1997, p.2) and the chances that you can change them is low considering that you already affected by their behaviour. The objective is to communicate effectively and achieve a favourable outcome. For instance, winning the attention or response of a difficult person does not mean you are smarter than him but rather making things work or focusing on better outcome. Accept the fact that these types of people are mostly focus on themselves and care little about you (Axelrod & Holtje 1997, p.2). Learning good interpersonal communication can benefit not only the “easy” type of people but also the difficult one. This is because getting them to talk and response in appropriate manner as often as possible can make them adapted and comfortable to healthy social life. Although this approach may not work in some extreme situation, the likely hood of change is greater particularly when the difficult person realize that you care and he is being unfair to you. Remember, difficult people are not necessarily bad – just different. 5. Conclusion Difficult people are everywhere and others may find them irritating. However, we cannot avoid them for the simple reason that they equally play an important role in our society. For some, communicating with difficult people is a problem and in extreme situation, encounters with this type of people results to serious emotional consequences. Difficult people have different style of communicating and more often than not, their style is annoying and unacceptable. Understanding the forces that are influencing their behaviour can help because it will be easy for others to acknowledge and accept their behaviour. People with this kind of behaviour often find comfort in what they do since every action or behaviour has its particular objective. Normally, difficult people are real and they often reveal themselves in detail. For this reason, other people can easily predict their reactions and becomes acquainted with their brand of behaviour. At this point, communication with difficult people is no longer a problem since learning to see them differently help ease the pain caused by a non-responsive and often times extreme behaviour. It is much better to confront these people than avoiding them since walking away or being passive will not only bring both party to isolation but setting aside one critical social problem unsolved. This people for one thing are not necessarily bad. In fact, they are mostly pleasant and decent people with unique behaviour and different background. One recommended solution to overcome this type of people is to avoid taking their behaviour personally. Instead, think of the benefits that you would gain during the encounter. Understand the real meaning of the actions and words, find out their values and expectations, do not stereotype because they a member of a certain group, take control of the communication, and learn effective interpersonal communication skills. Avoiding them is definitely not a viable solution. Think about the behaviour rather than the person; do not take it personally, do not expect them to change suddenly, communicate effectively and strive to get a positive response. 6. Reference List AXELROD A. & HOLTJIE, 1997, 201 ways to deal with difficult people, McGraw-Hill Professional, US BENJAMIN S. 2007, Perfect Phrases for Dealing with Difficult People: Hundreds of Ready-to-Use Phrases for Handling Conflict, Confrontations and Challenging Personalities, McGraw-Hill Professional, US BRINKMAN R. & KIRSCHNER R. 2003, Dealing with Difficult People: 24 Lessons for Bringing Out the Best in Everyone, McGraw-Hill Professional, US CARTER K. & PRESNELL M. 1994, Interpretive approaches to interpersonal communication, SUNY Press, US COLE K. 2002, The complete idiot's guide to clear communication, Alpha Books, US CUPACH W., SPITZBERG B. 1994, The Dark side of interpersonal communication, Routledge, US DICKSON H. 2003, Skilled Interpersonal Communication: Research Theory and Practice, Routledge, UK HARGIE O. & DICKSON D. 2004, Skilled interpersonal communication: research, theory, and practice, Routledge, UK HARTLEY P. 1999, Interpersonal communication, Routledge, UK LILLEY R. 2002, Dealing with difficult people, Kogan Page Publishers, UK LUNDIN W., LUNDIN K., & DOBSON M. 2008, Working with Difficult People, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn, US NAZARKO L. 2000, NVQs in nursing and residential homes, Wiley-Blackwell, UK STROMAN J., WILSON K., & WAUSON J. 2008, Administrative Assistant's and Secretary's Handbook. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn, US WEST R. & TURNER L. 2008, Understanding Interpersonal Communication: Making Choices in Changing Times, Cengage Learning, US WINBOLT B., 2002, Difficult People: A Guide to Handling Difficult Behaviour, ISR Publishing, UK Read More