Coping with Difficult People

Rating:
Summary: Read and share with your co-workers
Review: After the second chapter I got on line and ordered more copies for my friends at work. The author captures it all. Highly recommended and well worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: you need this book wherever you are; Even alone on an island
Review: Coping with Difficult People is an amazingly useful book. Difficult people are all around you, even when you're alone: Most people don't realise just how difficult and unconstructive they can be! This book gives helps you identify difficult behaviour, and how to get around it.

WHAT THIS BOOK GIVES YOU

Difficult behaviour is not all that difficult to identify. That is, unless you're in the middle of a confrontation and you're either too annoyed or intimidated or distracted to realise what's taking place. This book won't turn you into a psychologist, but it will teach you how to identify difficult, destructive, problematic behaviour in people, and how to cope with it.

This book is about coping. You can't always convince someone, and when someone's determinsed to make life difficult for you you can't always win. But you can try to push ahead, keep your cool, remain focused and constructive and pleasant and not be trampled on. If you're experiencing a difficult time because of co-workers or friends or family members, having read this book, your life will not become all of a sudden easier and simpler and nicer. Difficult people will continue to make your life difficult. But if you follow the suggestions in the book you should be able to neutralise most of the difficult behaviour to the point where you can get things done.

WHY DOES IT WORKS WITH OTHERS

This book will help you because it's recipe oriented, and if you become adept at it, you will be able to use its suggestions under pressure -- the elements of surprise or helplessness in the difficult behaviour will be missed on you. Key phrases, key words, body language are used to identify a type of difficult behaviour/person. Then a basic approach is tailored around the type of difficult person you're dealing with, though you will need to adapt the material in the book to your particular environment, situation and style. The better you anticipate an encounter with a difficult person and plan for it, the less of a surprise will that person enjoy, the less a sense of inevitability and helplessness will he be able to instill in you. In that sense, this book is the equivalent to a book on Chess openings. It's very effective.

WHY DOES IT WORKS WITH YOURSELF

Almost everybody is a difficult person sometimes. This book will help you identify patterns of difficult behaviour in yourself, and will give you some rudimentry insight into why you're behaving that way. Becoming conscious of when you exhibit difficult, uncooperative, destructive behaviour -- with what people, in what situations, etc, is a first step to curbing these tendencies within yourself.

Rating:
Summary: you need this book wherever you are; Even alone on an island
Review: Coping with Difficult People is an amazingly useful book. Difficult people are all around you, even when you're alone: Most people don't realise just how difficult and unconstructive they can be! This book gives helps you identify difficult behaviour, and how to get around it.

WHAT THIS BOOK GIVES YOU

Difficult behaviour is not all that difficult to identify. That is, unless you're in the middle of a confrontation and you're either too annoyed or intimidated or distracted to realise what's taking place. This book won't turn you into a psychologist, but it will teach you how to identify difficult, destructive, problematic behaviour in people, and how to cope with it.

This book is about coping. You can't always convince someone, and when someone's determinsed to make life difficult for you you can't always win. But you can try to push ahead, keep your cool, remain focused and constructive and pleasant and not be trampled on. If you're experiencing a difficult time because of co-workers or friends or family members, having read this book, your life will not become all of a sudden easier and simpler and nicer. Difficult people will continue to make your life difficult. But if you follow the suggestions in the book you should be able to neutralise most of the difficult behaviour to the point where you can get things done.

WHY DOES IT WORKS WITH OTHERS

This book will help you because it's recipe oriented, and if you become adept at it, you will be able to use its suggestions under pressure -- the elements of surprise or helplessness in the difficult behaviour will be missed on you. Key phrases, key words, body language are used to identify a type of difficult behaviour/person. Then a basic approach is tailored around the type of difficult person you're dealing with, though you will need to adapt the material in the book to your particular environment, situation and style. The better you anticipate an encounter with a difficult person and plan for it, the less of a surprise will that person enjoy, the less a sense of inevitability and helplessness will he be able to instill in you. In that sense, this book is the equivalent to a book on Chess openings. It's very effective.

WHY DOES IT WORKS WITH YOURSELF

Almost everybody is a difficult person sometimes. This book will help you identify patterns of difficult behaviour in yourself, and will give you some rudimentry insight into why you're behaving that way. Becoming conscious of when you exhibit difficult, uncooperative, destructive behaviour -- with what people, in what situations, etc, is a first step to curbing these tendencies within yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Be Defeated By Those Difficults
Review: Deal more effectively with those difficult people in your life with this practical, easy to implement advice from Robert Bramson. I found this handy little reference guide so useful that I included it in the suggested reading list of my own book titled, Rat Race Relaxer: Your Potential & The Maze of Life.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: extremely detailed explanation of how situations are and how people react, i extremely recommend this book to anyone who has problems with difficult people. A great book, and an author who really knows what he's talking about. I would give it 6 stars if i could :).

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Good techniques...but sometime you can come across such difficult people--nothing works. Still this book tells good stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Read and share with your co-workers
Review: I found this book (audiotape)to be an excellent and very practical manual on how to handle both difficult people in everyday situations as well as everyday people in difficult situations. What is really good about this book is that it gives the exact sentences, words, and phrases to use in various situations. It provides an actual script for what needs to be said when coping with difficult people.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent and practical manual on how to handle anyone.
Review: I found this book (audiotape)to be an excellent and very practical manual on how to handle both difficult people in everyday situations as well as everyday people in difficult situations. What is really good about this book is that it gives the exact sentences, words, and phrases to use in various situations. It provides an actual script for what needs to be said when coping with difficult people.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Coping Advice for the Workplace
Review: I've read this book at least a dozen times since I purchased it, and it only gets better with each rereading.

Bramson provides an amazingly easy-to-read yet useful strategy for coping (primarily in the workplace) with difficult people. Rather than attempt to give advice on assertiveness training for the reader, Bramson instead encourages the reader to more carefully observe the situation and analyze the difficult person's behavior. Realizing that difficult people behave in a difficult manner because they have learned that such behaviors help them get their own way is a major lesson that Bramson teaches. Bramson not only covers overt bullying (he calls these people "bulldozers")but also equally difficult people who are overly quiet, sarcastic, procrastinate, or habitually nay-say. I suffer from several such people at my college department (a psychology department no less!) and I can vouch for the truth of Bramson's wisdom.

This book is not a quick-fix, but it can help you cope with other's difficult behavior. I recommend this to anyone whose job requires teamwork. This book is pop psychology at its finest.

Rating:
Summary: the real difficult person is inside you
Review: Most people have difficulty in dealing with certain personality types. An inability to deal effectively with others can cause very serious problems in morale, job performance and self esteem. It has been said that most problems related to losing one's job has more to do with human relations than with job performance per se. As a person who has been fired many times, I can attest to that statement. I've seen incompetent people keep their jobs, but I've seen several people (myself included) lose their jobs over inter-personal conflicts which seem silly in comparison. The more one is able to resolve and or avoid conflicts, the more successful they will be in the long run.

This book divides difficult people into seven different types namely "hostile-aggressives", "complainers", "silent and unreasponsives", "super-agreeables", "negativists", "know-it-all experts" and "indecisives". Each type of behavior is explained and real-world examples of each in action are given. The forte of the book is how it explains how to cope effectively with each type. In my dealings with others, I've found that the coping advice given is right on target. Chances are, any type of difficult person will fit into one of the aforementioned categories. If not, they will be a variation or a combination of two or more of them. The coping methods given in the book are not always easy to implement because they require a lot of practice and may require a great deal of courage. This isn't a book to just read once, the methods must be studied and practiced if you wish to benefit from it.

One of the most interesting things I've discovered when reading this book is that I have fit into some of the categories of difficult people at times. The more effectively I can learn about and fight my own difficult behavior, the easier it will be for me to deal with others who possess the same traits. Regardless of how much one knows about dealing with difficult people, it can still be a battle to implement the methods given in this book. Therefore, coping with difficult people is not about using some simple trick, it's all about confronting the difficult person within each of us.