How to Deal With Difficult People
Smart Tactics for Overcoming the Problem People in Your Life

DON?T LET PROBLEM PEOPLE GET TO YOU!

Whether it?s a manager who keeps moving the goal posts, an uncooperative colleague, negative friend, or critical family member, some people are just plain hard to get along with.

Often, your immediate response is to shrink or sulk, become defensive or attack. But there are smarter moves to make when dealing with difficult people. This book explains how to cope with a range of situations with difficult people and to focus on what you can change.

This book will help you to:

• Understand what makes difficult people tick and how best to handle them
• Learn ways to confidently stand up to others and resist the urge to attack back
• Develop strategies to calmly navigate emotionally-charged situations
• Deal with all kinds of difficult people ? hostile, manipulative and the impossible
• Know when to choose your battles, and when to walk away

Why let someone else?s bad attitude ruin your day? How to Deal With Difficult People arms you with all the tools and tactics you need to handle all kinds of people ? to make your life less stressful and a great deal easier.

Introduction vii

Part One Dealing With Difficult People 1

1 Difficult People and Their Difficult Behaviour 3

2 Is It You? 17

3 Communicating With Difficult People 45

4 Standing Up to Difficult People 67

Part Two Putting It Into Practice 91

5 Dealing With Direct Hostility 93

6 Dealing With Indirect Hostility 117

7 Dealing With Passive People 143

Part Three When All Else Fails 161

8 Dealing With Impossible People 163

Conclusion 185

About the Author 189

Acknowledgements 191

Index 193

Gill Hasson is a bestselling personal development author, whose reassuring approach has helped thousands of people develop and understand the skills they need to lead a more peaceful, stress-free life. She works with people from diverse backgrounds and situations. Her key motivation is her belief in the ability of people to positively change their way of thinking — about life, other people, and themselves. She works in adult education, is an associate tutor at the University of Sussex, and delivers training for QA, one of the UK's largest training providers, and Mumsnet, the UK's largest website for parents. Gill is a freelance journalist and writes articles on personal development and relationships for a variety of magazines, including Psychologies and Take A Break, and for a number of websites. She has co-authored two books with Sue Hadfield How to be Assertive in Any Situation and Bounce: Use the Power of Resilience to Live the Life You Want. She is the author of Brilliant Communication Skills, Brilliant Emotional Intelligence, and with Capstone has published Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence and How to Deal with Difficult People, which reached the #3 spot in the Sunday Times Bestseller list.