How To Deal With Difficult People Review

Dealing with difficult people is not one of my strongest skills. Avoiding confrontation might work in the short term, but it is not very effective in the long haul. When I noticed How To Deal With Difficult People by Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner, a set of four cassette tapes, at my public library, I thought it would be a great learning tool.

What I like about How To Deal With Difficult People:

• These tapes are convenient for me to put in my car's cassette tape player and listen as I drive (I know that the majority of you probably have CD players, so you might want to check to see if these are on CD as well.)
• The program is well-organized. It lists personality types as aggressive and passive and separates strategies into four possible quadrants.
• It gives a great description of non-verbal cues and pacing.
• Some of it is backed by study results.
• It provides lots of illustrations, describing different personality types such as the "tank," "grenade," "yes people," "no people," "maybe people," attention seekers, etc. For instance, when dealing with someone who likes to talk about other people, a suggestion would be to ask the person if he has spoken with that "problem" person about the matter. If not, you might suggest that the person speak directly with that person or ask for permission to speak with the person about the matter.
• It also gives suggestions if you find yourself displaying difficult communication skills and offers examples of mixes of various personality types and the most likely difficulties that might arise.
• It is memorable through the use of humor. A communication program could be dreadfully boring and monotonous, but these men act out loads of humorous examples and incorporate music and sound effects that are designed to help one remember various strategies.
• They don't presume that they know all the answers. They suggest various options in dealing with difficult people and mention that a viable option might be to exit the relationship, but offers specific and practical steps that one may take that might actually inspire the other person to change him or herself.
• There is a bonus section at the end that made me laugh out loud!

Room for imrpovement in How To Deal With Difficult People:

• Most of the scenarios are geared toward the workplace and may be a bit more difficult to incorporate in some other places, but many of the examples can be applied in quite a few settings.
• Sometimes these techniques might work and at other times and with certain people, they might not work.

General Information:

• Copywrite 1987
• Produced by Career Track Publications; 1800 38th St.; Boulder, CO 80301
• Phone for Career Track Publications: (303) 440-7440
• Each cassette tape was approximately 30 minutes per side, so the entire program lasted for about four hours.

My Viewpoint:

Dealing with difficult people can be, well, difficult. Expecting different results when we do the same things over and over usually does not improve the outcome and may produce progressively worse results. The casette tape program entitled How To Deal With Difficult People is informative and humorous and provides some concrete examples for strategies that people might use to get better results. I believe a similar program is also offered through a website with a 2007-08 copywrite if you are interested in a more modern version.