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March 18, 2007

Conflict Resolution: Dealing with Difficult People

At this time, this post is less a how-to and more of a confession.

I am an impatient, know-it-all, Type A, control-freak who often has to deal with people who are also control-freaks. The problem that I have is that those people often know that they are asking me to do something that goes against policy, procedure, process, or best practices but because that's what they want, I have to deliver.

I often find this difficult to swallow. I am not so much a perfectionist as I am extremely protective of my values and work ethic, and of the best practices that are tried and true because they make sense, are cost-effective, and save time. I am not an office-politics player and frankly, I don't really play nice with other children that well either. I work best independently or in a position of authority where my experience is respected.

I think that accountability is important, professionally and personally, and anything that blurs the line between who is accountable is, to me, a bad idea. Not because I like to point fingers and lay blame, but because no one grows by not owning their mistakes or by owning someone else's mistakes.

Unfortunately, my personality often causes me to come off as aggressive, intimidating, or occasionally even hostile and uncooperative. Usually, by the time it gets to that point, it's been identified that I am dealing with a difficult person or situation. Unfortunately, fighting fire with fire is not always the best course of action.

The problem is that I don't really see a good way to put out the fire. It is not in my nature to simply roll over and give in to every flight of fancy someone else gets in their head. I don't like to say no, but usually requests are reasonable and when they are not, usually the requestor is reasonable and understands why the request shouldn't be accommodated. I am in a unique situation these days where the request is unreasonable and the requestor is unreasonable and I am stuck having to disagree and commit far more often than I like.

My strategy for this, at present, is actually to do one thing: I signed up for a class that is required for my major anyway. It's called Conflict Resolution and Team Dynamics and I think that it should be useful both personally and professionally. I have some high hopes for it and will be sharing what I learn as I learn it.

I can't say that I feel particularly motivated to learn how to deal with difficult people since my true feeling is that they should just ask for reasonable things, ha ha, but given that this is not going to be a theme that goes away, and will be relevant my whole life, personally and through the course of my career, I think it's as good a time as any to look into better ways to handle these kinds of situations.

Posted by lunasmom at March 18, 2007 12:19 AM

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