Hints and tips: Dealing with awkward people–Tip 2

A pair of psychologists called Alan A. Cavaiola, PhD, and Neil J. Lavender, PhD surveyed more than 1,100 employees and captured their thoughts in a book called “Toxic Co-workers: How to Deal with Dysfunctional People on the Job”.  This is the second in a series of short blogs with  tips based on their work.

2. Make your needs known:  It maybe that the person simply isn’t communicating with you in a way that works for you.  As someone who is a bit dyslexic, if you give me a long complex verbal instruction, I simply can’t process that.  It is a bit like I have a two sentence audio buffer and the third sentence overwrites sentence one, so I need either to take notes, or better still, fully understand what you want so I can recreate the sequence from my own understanding.  We all have a preference for how we take on board information, we are either audio, visual or kinaesthetic, which is a posh way of saying we see it, hear it or feel it.  A clue is often there in our language “Tell me or “Show me”, or “I don’t get it..”  My brother, who is an Aikido black belt and coach, spotted the fact that my learning style is kinaesthetic.  I have to feel it in my body in order to remember it, I can’t replay a video tape or audio tape in my head.

This advice goes beyond communication needs and style though.  Often we misinterpret what other people mean, so before assuming the other person is at fault or being a b*tch or b*stard, try to check your understanding.  Steven Covey in his “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” tells us to seek first to understand then be understood, which is also echoed in Aikido and their rule to put yourself in your partner’s place.  Use non-accusatory language, and say something like “When you do….. I feel …..  What I would prefer is if you could do…, that would enable us to ….”  This format provides clear context and explanation of the issue, takes ownership of the feelings, makes clear what will work for you and the benefit (to them) of doing this.

The rest of this series:

1. Tip 1

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2015 at 08:00 and is filed under Hints, Tips & Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.