Archives for April 2012

How to Deal with Difficult People

Quote of the Week:

“Difficult People are your key to self-empowerment, you need to learn how to cope with them, and not let them dominate and affect you.” – Janice Davies

What does this quote bring to mind? What personality type is a challenge for you? What have you done to overcome this difficult person? Please let us know more via the comment section below.

We have all come across difficult people at work. In my experience, a challenging person may leave me stifled and frustrated. I may not be as efficient and effective as I’d like to be. When working with a problematic person, a red flag is fatigue and irritation after spending time with that person.

Yet, these are signals that there’s work to be done. I can avoid it or step up to the challenge. If I accomplish this task it may enhance my career while possibly helping the other person.

Obviously, not all disagreements and personality clashes can be attributed to difficult people, yet there certainly are extreme cases where a co-worker can make it virtually impossible for you to work together creating an almost toxic work environment.

Questions to ask yourself:

1. How long will I be working with this individual?

2. How important is my relationship with this person to my work and the bottom line?

3. What areas of communication do I need to address personally? Am I paying attention or distracted? What’s my contribution to this issue?

4. Do I have the ability to empathize with this individual or some part of them?

5. What role do I play in this challenging situation?

6. What type of person is this? Aggressive, shy, passive-aggressive? What approach works best with their type?

6. Tips to Deal with Difficult People

1. Get feedback from others about yourself with someone you trust. Ask how they experience your communication style and if they see roadblocks.

2. Avoid gossiping about the person. Anger feeds anger. Negativity Feeds Negativity. The situation becomes unnecessarily magnified.

3. Take time out. Practice and plan your interactions. Learn effective communication tools when working with certain personality types.

4. Avoid taking this situation personally. You are probably not the first to feel frustrated with this person.

5. Hold your ground by communicating rather than arguing. Set boundaries rather than allow angry or inappropriate behavior to impact you.

6. View the situation as an opportunity to learn rather than avoid. It’s important to understand that these interactions are a part of work and life. They will happen many times throughout our existence. We have the opportunity to improve and feel empowered or remain stagnant and uncomfortable when dealing with these situations.

In our next post we’ll talk about “Types of Difficult People” and how to recognize and cope with them.

Thank you for reading. Have a great weekend.

Frank

Importance of Leadership Development

In order to carry any cause to the end, it is important that you have a leader to carry it through. For this reason, for any cause considered important enough to develop, nurturing leaders for the future is just as important. Organizations, businesses, countries and schools all need to ensure that they develop leaders good enough to not only understand what their leading cause might be, but to understand their importance and also understand how to develop these causes.

Independence And Innovation

Leadership development is very important because without it a person might not have the means to carry his ideas through to the target that they deserve. We all have natural abilities and talents that point towards being a leader. A sense of independence, innovation and decision making are all the features of a successful leader, but most of us are taught to repress them and follow instructions. In the scheme of things this means hundreds of forgotten ideas and abandoned intentions, but if these qualities were developed, then there would not be one good mind to follow but rather hundreds.

Cooperation And Compromise

Independence is the key to innovation, and unless a person is taught to value his independence, it is useless. Of course a good leader is not someone who does exactly what he or she wants – rather it is someone who has a purpose, develops the means to get to the end of that purpose, and then proposes the idea in such a way that people naturally agree with it and would want to work towards the same cause. A good leader listens to his followers, and takes in their input and suggestions with due importance. As a result, the idea of leadership in itself is an important one to develop, not the individual qualities that contribute towards being a leader.

Leaders As Followers

Developing strong leadership qualities means having a strong, competent backbone of workers in the future. It means having a great sense of innovation and revolution, with people who understand the core values of all they have been taught, and know what they need to do to develop and extend those core values. For businesses and enterprises alike, it is important that all employees be followers and leaders at the same time, because it is that which leads to their success as independent thinkers and cooperative workers, both in coexistence.

To develop a sense of leadership in an individual is to assign them a sense of responsibility, for their own actions, for the purpose of the enterprise they work with and for the other individuals around them. In this regard, it is vital for any organization, whether on a personal level at home, or an economic level, that all individuals be treated and regarded as leaders. This would mean them having a strong sense of responsibility for the organization they are associated with, and in the future, would give them a better chance of leading an organization themselves.

To ensure sustainable leadership and a strong future, it is imperative that leadership skills be developed in all individuals in every stage of their growth and development.

Top 10 Leadership Qualities

Although it is famously said that leaders are born, not made, the fact of the matter is that leadership, like all other qualities is also something that can be developed into an individual. Likewise, there are certain qualities and traits that are common to individuals commonly perceived as leaders, Although it is easiest if an individual has those qualities naturally, there is no doubt that they can also be developed and nurtured in a person.

Having A Purpose

All leaders know exactly what they want and have a clear sense of vision of how to get there. Only if you can clearly and exactly know what you envision for the future, and have an exact sense of your goals and purposes can you actually chart a way of getting there.

Decision Making

A good leader is not afraid of taking decisions, even though he knows that the actions of others, and their success and failure will lie on him. Taking the initiative to make a decision is what allows leaders to step forward, take action and work towards the goals.

Not Afraid To Take A Risk

All good leaders know that their every action will not be a success; however they do not allow this to hold them back from taking action or making a decision. If you make a decision, there is a chance you will fail, but if you don’t, there is a guarantee that you will. As a result, taking no risks is the sure way to getting no gains, and no real leader should be afraid of taking a risk.

The Power To Motivate

A good leader is nothing without a strong team, and it is a fact that a strong leader is well aware of. Therefore, to be able to get the right course of action, leaders need to know how to motivate their team and taskforce towards working on that goal, and thereby succeed.

Working In Teams

Again, a good leader is nothing without a strong team to take support and help from. There is a subtle difference between a strong leader and a dictator, and in the long run only the former can be truly successful.

Strong Sense Of Self-Knowledge

To have a strong understanding of one’s capabilities and limitations is another important feature for all leaders to possess. Only when one truly understands their weaknesses can they use their strengths to work past them.

Honesty And Character

All good leaders must be prepared to be accountable for their actions. A leader has strong followers only if they truly trust and respect him, and that arises out of complete honesty and integrity only.

Constant Learning

Like all successful people, leaders know that they have as much to learn as they have to teach. One can learn from the simplest of men and that is not a fact that should be taken lightly.

Good Communication

Explaining your ideas to your followers is an important quality in a leader, as is being able to effectively convince others of your aims and visions. Hence, it can be said that communication is one of the key aspects to good leadership.

Helpful

And finally, all leaders should know the importance of helping others. Whether just to help them reach their common aims, or help them develop their own, it is important that leaders always be willing to help others.