Principles do not change. Water is two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom – this will not change. The North poles of two magnets repel – this will not change. Gravity rips you down to Earth – this will not change. The unchanging laws of science are parallel to the unchanging principles and laws of communication to deal with difficult people.

If you have a difficult person in your life, you may think he or she is impossible to deal with, yet the person is not an impenetrable rock. It’s human! And humans follow laws of psychology and behavior you can benefit from. This article will provide you with judo-like principles to convert seemingly impossible forces of a difficult person into tips to effectively deal with them.

The world is filled with stubborn people. The difficult people – and not so difficult – even think you’re at times difficult. Learn the following tips (taken from my Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program) to deal with difficult people in your everyday life:

What Doesn’t Work

Sending solutions. Common phrases that indicate solving include: “What if you…” “Stop doing… and start…” and “Why don’t you…” Telling people what to do does not work. Solutions are the problem. The more you push solutions on people, the more they pull away from you and your suggestion. Real solutions, commitment, and desire for change come from participation.

Moralizing. Common phrases that indicate moralizing include: “You should….” “It would be good for you to…” and “Stop doing wrong…” Chapter eight of my program defines moralizing words as “using what is right and wrong, good and bad, black and white to further your logic.” Manipulation from guilt and other emotions that arise from moral words do not change difficult people – yet alone anyone.

Complaints. “I wish Bill wasn’t so damn annoying.” Bickering is mental masturbation. Creation comes from being proactive. If you complain, you’re the difficult person. You become no better than the person you try to change.

Criticism. People criticize to build change. “I’m results-focused. I criticize people to get things done.” Similar lines of thinking drive the 12 communication barriers (criticism, labeling, diagnosing, praise, orders, threats, questions, moralizing, advice, reason, reassurance, and deflecting). Avoid criticism because it is not charismatic persuasion. Criticism intensifies conflict. Criticized individuals feel diminished, unworthy, and less important.

What Does Work: 10 Principles and Tips to Deal with a Difficult Person

The following principles and tips are not short-term tricks to transform an annoying person. Endless articles have been written on the Internet that provide frivolous advice on this topic. When the core problem is addressed, however, colds get skipped and the cancer is cut out. The advice in this article gets down to the core of what really matters when dealing with a difficult person and does not change from situation because the advice is timeless.

1. You see the world as you are. Stephanie Rosenbloom for The New York Times hit the heart of difficult people; or rather the people who think someone is difficult. Rosenbloom says the issue “is not the difficult people themselves. It is you.”

Most articles that provide tips to deal with difficult people focus on difficult individuals (“They’re the problem”); hence they miss the real problem (“You’re part of the problem”). You play a role in a difficult person’s behavior. Problems transmute from your perception, then your reaction. Carl Jung said we repress certain characteristics often due to our attempts to fit in with people, which manifest in discomfort around people we repulse. Jungian psychoanalyst Edward Whitmont writes:

“Ask someone to give a description of the personality type which he finds most despicable, most unbearable and hateful, and most impossible to get along with, and he will produce a description of his own repressed characteristics – a self-description which is utterly unconscious and which therefore always and everywhere tortures him as he receives its effect from the other person. These very qualities are so unacceptable to him precisely because they represent his own repressed side; only that which he cannot accept without ourselves do we find impossible to live with in others.”

What characteristics in people do you hate most? What do these characteristics say about you? Who doesn’t find the person difficult? What can you learn from people who don’t find the person hard to face?

A chronically difficult person is rare. Your self-image makes people difficult. I strongly encourage you to notice as often as possible what you deny in yourself because this could be a repressed image, a shadow you see in others, that you have ignored in the past. “In the end,” says Rosenbloom, “the specialists say, we cannot control other people, only our response to them.” (The first chapter of my Big Talk training course taps into this deep, dark psychological theory that stops us from enjoyable conversation. When you connect with your full self, it becomes easy to connect with people and make friends. This is cutting-edge material you can discover more about here.)

2. Lose the need to be right. When you enter a conversation with the intent to fix someone, you become difficult. Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People says you must open yourself to be influenced to influence. Quit thinking you’re right because this drives your resistance to be changed and change people.

3. Clear your heart, open your mind. Too often our experiences with people hurt our current conversations with them. It takes time for someone in your negative light to shift under a positive spotlight – even when the person hasn’t been difficult for a while.

Forgive to clean your heart then keep an open mind as to why someone is difficult. Stop hopping to conclusions by portraying the problem as the person’s difficulty. You blockade truth with judgments and fear of self-analysis.

Perhaps you are the problem, their father was diagnosed with cancer, or they are in financial trouble. Acknowledge that you do not – and will never – know all reasons why someone is difficult. An open mind that welcomes a person’s point of view to enter possible explanations for their behavior creates a cushion to soften harsh judgments.

Listen to the difficult person and let them express their point of view – it will help you see why they are difficult. This tip alone can be enough to deal with the person as you see the reason for their behavior. Listen honestly, actively, and empathically.

4. Want difficult people. It’s scary, but wanting a bothersome person helps you. Difficult people create conflict – and this creates change. If organisms faced no challenges, they would have no reason to evolve. Difficulties challenge you, compelling you to evolve into a superior being.

Does this mean you can be difficult? No. There is people who find you difficult enough. The diversity of human nature brings with it differences that catapult humanity through difficulties.

5. Be proactive, not reactive. Reactive persons blame circumstances for their reality. They reciprocate bad behavior. They reason other people need to change.

Proactive persons create what they want regardless of constricting circumstances. Create a value in yourself to be proactive and treat people with respect. Once you stop reciprocating bad behavior, you feel proud, empowered, and in control of your life – regardless of whether you successfully handle the situation. Make the fundamental decision to commit to the advice given in this article.

6. Be responsible, not a victim. Don’t blame people for how they make you feel. The degree you’re a victim of someone’s behavior controls the impact it has on you.

Take responsibility for how you feel. Prevent people from entering and exiting your emotional state at will. Eliminate blame to free yourself from a person’s difficult behavior.

You don’t have to be burdened by people’s problems. You will work towards a solution faster and be less emotionally exasperated when you lose the victim mentality and stop thinking people are villains. My friend Gary Harper has a good article on this where he also discusses similar principles to this article.

7. Be problem-oriented, not person-oriented. Difficult people have a difficult problem and are trying to fulfill a need the only way they know possible. It seems elusive, but even they want to live in harmony.

People are not the problem. Focus on the problem and not the person. A helpful tip for this is to disassociate the problem from the person. Their behavior, even you, or something else is the problem.

8. Find the unmet need. Difficult people have an unmet need. Whether somebody is angry, unhappy, depressed, loud, or anxious, they try to fulfill a need – though it is often done poorly. Notice a hidden need beneath someone’s difficult behavior, and you will see another human being. This will allow you to compassionately communicate. The Nonviolent Communication Process is a model that gets you focused on, and fulfilling, other people’s needs and your own.

9. Be interdependent. Dependency is unhealthy. To overcome this, self-help experts teach independence. According to most people, independence is health, freedom, and power. By itself, nothing could be further from the truth.

According to Robert Greene, author of 48 Laws of Power, a powerful individual living in isolation destroys his power. John O’Neil in The Paradox of Success confirms Greene’s remarks. O’Neil says leaders and other individuals in powerful positions destroy their success and happiness with overt independence. Such persons do it all, have chronic obsessions with work and difficulties getting their mind off work, and easily become irritated by others who disagree with their decision-making.

A powerful communicator knows how to distribute decision-making for freedom. He or she knows how to seek help because the person is not afraid to admit failure and learn. This is the interdependent standpoint you need beyond solitude. “When we try to pick out anything by itself,” said famed conservationist John Muir, “we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

You don’t need to solve all problems by yourself. It sounds simple, but talking to a parent, manager, or human resource department is helpful. Other people bring knowledge, skills, and persuasive power to handle a difficult person. However, be beware of risks associated with making a private problem public. It’s your responsibility to respect a person’s privacy concerns, but at the same time you need to request another’s help when necessary.

10. Be detached from an outcome.

If the above tips and principles fail you, it’s not because they don’t work – it’s because you disobeyed them. The principles and tips given to you cannot fail because they are the foundations for good communication.

If you lose the need to be right while remaining proactive, for example, you deal with the difficult person. Stop thinking the only way to deal with a difficult person is to change them, such desire only makes you difficult.

When you attach to an outcome by seeking a specific result from an interaction at all costs, your rigidity causes resistance. The most common outcome people attach to when they converse with a difficult person is their need to be right and change the person (principle #2). Going into a conversation with the righteous intent to change a person guarantees failure. You must detach from an outcome.

If the principles and tips do not bring you the result you’re after, be prepared to walk away. Give the two of you some space to think the problems through. By doing this, you clear your heart and open your mind, remain proactive, and keep problem-oriented. A tough issue can be solved at a later time. Another day can bring different possibilities. Emotions, thoughts, and attitudes change all the time.

Unsuccessful conflict resolution of an issue with a difficult person can often escalate the problem, but adhere to these principles and tips to deal with a difficult person to make the difficult more manageable. “Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen,” said Friedrich Nietzsche, “few in pursuit of the goal.”

(If you are reading this and found the above principles and tips to deal with difficult people helpful, you will enjoy my “Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program” where the principles for this article were extracted. Click here to learn more about the program and how you can develop your communication skills to charismatically have cold-hearted persons wanting to change. You can also discover more about Big Talk, my training course that lets two persons openly and freely talk with one another, here.)

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Controlling People – Signs of a Controlling Person and How to Deal with Them
2. Review of Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen
3. How to Manage and Deal with an Aggressive Boss
4. How to Not Care What People Are Thinking About You – and Release Your People-Magnetic Self Into the Conversation
5. Review of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

“Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.” – Karl Ludwig Borne (1786-1837)

“Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.” – David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930), English writer who often criticized modern living’s negative influence on humans

“Few people have the imagination for reality.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), famous German writer

Lies, deception, misunderstandings, illusions, distortions, and deceit is easier to accept than the truth. We are creatures of denial. Ignorance has a cushioning effect to soften the harshness of reality.

While you may ignore the truth because it is uncomfortable to face, other times you accept myths over truth because you don’t know the difference. A relationship expert, counselor, psychologist, or even a communication trainer may have mislead you to believe a communication myth is truth. Whatever the case maybe, this article is sure to shake up your communication beliefs and shock you into reality, allowing you to communicate more effectively.

Originally I was struggling to complete 10 myths for this article, but after brainstorming, researching, observing people communicate, coaching people on their communication skills, asking tens of thousands of subscribers on communication myths, and picking out myths from my buried notes, 15 myths fitted surprisingly snug. I believe all these myths need to be revealed, cleared, and truth be told so we are better empowered to improve our personalities and relationships.

The greatest myths of communication are arranged in order depending on their frequency and strength in people’s minds. From lies, illusions, flawed teachings, and misunderstandings, it is time to debunk the top 15 all-time myths of communication:

#15 Myth: Logic makes communication effective

Logic destroys relationships. The next time you see two people in an argument, watch them focus on the logical level. Each person will give facts the other does not care about. The content and logical focus of a conversation has been the demise of many relationships.

When bland words and facts are focused upon, causing emotions to be overlooked, the relationship suffers. Intelligence, reasoning, and rationality are fine. Problems can arise when logic gets center of attention in a conversion – especially during conflict. The emotional content of conflict needs to be handled first before facts can surface.

Stop focusing on the content of conversations. Look beyond the words to see emotion. Start caring about people’s emotions beneath their content of a conversation because relationships are fueled by emotion.

Even in business communications you need to focus on emotion. We want others to understand how we feel instead of pointing out the facts or telling us how to feel. When you understand humans are creatures of emotion, and that we are predictably irrational, you enable yourself to have great charisma and persuasive power. (I recommend you read chapter 10 of my communication secrets program for full details on how to overcome this logical dilemma to communicate at an emotional level so you powerfully connect with people.)

#14 Myth: Effective communication is about the blunt truth

I know this myth will be interpreted by readers in a different way than how I intend it to be. A person who always tells the blunt truth is disliked by those who always get told the truth. Truth-tellers use the excuse of, “I tell it how it is” and “If people can’t deal with reality, it’s their problem.” They may even see their need to tell the truth as a virtue.

The truth we tell others often manifests itself into criticism that gets thrown back into our faces with defensiveness or arguments. Truth is hurtful when delivered in the absence of empathy. Productive communication is inhibited when people are too busy defending themselves from personal attacks.

I am not advocating you lie or give people enormous amounts of praise when they sucked at something or to live a deceptive life. Lies are unnecessary when you deliver the facts with compassion. You need compassion in a tell-it-like-it-is attitude.

Truth is not a virtue without compassion. “Our tendency is to choose up sides, valuing certain emotional skills while neglecting and even disparaging others,” write Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in The Power of Full Engagement. “Take a moment to consider how broad a range of emotional muscles you have in your own life. In all likelihood you will discover that you have considerable more strength on one side of the spectrum than on the other. Notice, too, the judgment that you bring to the relative merits of opposing qualities.”

Loehr and Schwartz go on to write that “no emotional capacity better serves depth and richness more than the willingness to value feelings that seem contradictory and not to choose up sides between them.” Have you been limiting your array of emotional skills by valuing the blunt truth over compassion?

#13 Myth: Communication solves everything

As someone who teaches communication skills, this myth is something I would like to believe! Unfortunately, communication does not solve all conflict and relationship problems. Sometimes the greatest charismatically persuasive communication cannot solve relationship issues.

Marina Benjamen, Ph.D. of Psych Central sees a frequent scenario in couples counseling. Couples have no “serious problem”. Both partners can vouch for no drinking, abuse, or infidelity. The problem? They do not communicate. A lack of communication can happen for many reasons, but by itself it rarely leads to relationship resolutions. “Good communication exposes conflict that when effectively dealt with,” says Benjamen, “can promote a more open and intimate connection.”

I have come to notice a transition point in people who adopt this myth of communication solving everything. The general public are vaguely advised that “communication is important in relationships”. Few people like yourself who go one step further by learning conflict management, emotional mastery, and self awareness, for example, come to realize how communication is greatly beneficial. The more we learn and develop ourselves, the more emphasis we place on communication. Eventually, we come to believe that any argument, relationship break up, or person who does not like us comes from poor communication.

Think of a worldly issue, like abortion or the death penalty, that you have a strong stance on. Do you think someone with opposing views who communicates well would change your mind? If you really believe in your stance on the issue, then communication is not going to change your mind. You and I have religious, political, and personal values that prevent communication solving everything.

Communication is the relationship, a shared connection between two points. Communication forms the bridge in a relationship so it makes sense to assume the problems coming and going must exist on the bridge. If either side has a serious enough foundational problem, however, the strongest bridge is not going to last.

People ask, “What things can I say and do to make people like me?” This is the wrong type of thinking! Most effective communication is doomed before you even open your mouth. Becoming charismatic and persuasive starts from within you. Changing people’s behavior starts from within you. And having intimate, sharing, and loving relationships starts within you. Change your life by changing your thinking. Good relationships happen with self development; not only through good communication.

I steer my focus away from telling people to say rehashed lines in certain situations because no magical line can effectively work when you are incongruent with your words. You can say one brilliant communication line, but how you feel and think is a greater influence on the outcome. My Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program is not about rehashed lines. It gets you deeply understanding yourself and other people so you can begin communicating more intimately, powerfully, persuasively, and charismatically.

#12 Myth: Learning communication makes you a better communicator

We are at a global health crisis. Doctors have repeatedly said that the large percentage of health problems in Western countries comes from choices controllable by those who suffer such health ailments. We are in control of drinking, eating, smoking, stressing, and exercising. The global health crisis is not occurring because we have failed to learn the implications of the evil five of health – we all know what happens when ignoring these – but the problem comes from our inability to change. (This is further proof that logic is weak.)

Learning about a health problem does not automatically make you healthier. We all know how to lose weight: you consume less energy than you put out. But the majority of us have health problems within our control, which we logically understand, yet continue to ignore.

Learning communication only makes you a better communicator when the lessons lead to behavioral change. Even failing at a new skill makes you a better communicator because you went out and did something. Stop trying to intellectualize everything and just give it a go. You will become a better communicator when you do it. (I recommend you read Alan Deutschman’s Change or Die for more information about this topic.)

#11 Myth: Communication is one-way

Radios, televisions, and many electrical devices in the home communicate one-way messages. It seems our relationships are often the same. At times it appears we communicate in a monologue. There is still two-way communication – just poor two-way communication – because we cannot not communicate.

Communication in human relationships is two-way. Even one-way communication like public speaking is two-way. We have eyes and ears that absorb people’s communication as listening or a lack of listening communicates a message. You can listen and not say a word to communicate. Whether you choose to do something with this gathered information to improve your relationships, increase your charisma, or boost your persuasion is up to you. It is up to you if you choose to empathize, laugh at, pay attention to, or ignore another person’s communication, yet two-way communication will always exist. Several other myths, as you will soon discover, nicely tie into this myth.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. The Benefits of Communication Skills
2. Why Smart People Have Poor Communication Skills – and What to Do About It
3. The Complete Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Process for Compassion, Understanding, and Peace
4. Review of Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
5. The Heart of Effective Communication: How to Love People

If you’ve ever felt the need to have an important conversation, but couldn’t bring yourself to it, this book is for you. Author Susan Scott details the exact methods to have conversations we know will change our life and other people’s life, but we procrastinate having usually because of fear. It’s important to overcome whatever barriers we face in communication because a conversation is not about the relationship – it is the relationship.

When people see the word “fierce”, they may think pain, tough, or brutality. As written on the book’s cover, “fierce” means robust, intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, and unbridled. A “fierce conversation” brings authenticity into your life as you communicate who you are and what you believe.

Fierce Conversations will get you to have the most important conservation you can have with someone, right now. Fierce Conversations will be especially helpful to you if you have trouble: expressing yourself, talking with others who have trouble expressing themselves, dealing with passive-aggressive people, or resolving an ignored issue people know exists. After all, if you want someone or something to change, you need to initiate the change. If something bothers you, you need to be the one who does something about it.

Whether through fear of hurting a person, receiving retaliation, or someone pointing out our own mistakes, we delay the conversations we need to experience. The problem comes down to how we present ourselves to others in conversations and how we think when we are by ourselves. All conversations are within yourself and some are with others.

From Ignorant Communication to Open Relationships

It is the book’s purpose to achieve four outcomes: interrogate reality, provoke learning, tackle tough challenges, and enrich relationships. These are achieved through the following 7 principles of fierce conversations:

1. Master the Courage to Interrogate Reality
2. Come Out from Behind Yourself into the Conversation and Make It Real
3. Be Here, Prepared to Be Nowhere Else
4. Tackle Your Toughest Challenge Today
5. Obey Your Instincts
6. Take Responsibility for Your Emotional Wake
7. Let Silence Do the Heavy Lifting

As a consultant for Fortune 500 companies, Scott leans the book’s examples of principles and models, towards business communication. If someone has communication problems at work, however, Scott says the same problems likely show up in their personal lives – so the book is just as applicable to personal communication. We need to have fierce conversations with family members, spouses, students, and friends; not only with those we share a business relationship.

Scott gives you a series of simple and practical exercises to do at the end of each chapter to help you use the chapter’s communication skills. She also provides insightful scenarios of her experience with clients’ use of communication models and their notable improvements from the change.

Be warned: Fierce Conversations is no emotional walk in the park. You’re forced to face hard questions about your reality. “It takes a certain fearlessness to make your private thoughts public,” writes Scott. “But if what you’re thinking makes you squirm and wish to wriggle away, you are probably onto something.”

If you choose to awaken to the truth by beginning a fierce conversation, communication opens up to improve your relationships. You will talk about what everyone pretends to not know. Don’t miss having one conversation that could change your life. Achieve success at work and in life, one conversation at a time by getting your copy of Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations directly from Amazon.com by clicking here today.

(You may also want to read Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen’s Difficult Conversations for another source of tips to have the conversations you avoid. Both books provide good tips, but lack the psychology and fear of talking about tough issues. Because I never could find a book that explained this problem, I wrote a book that shows how I solved my fears of difficult conversations. To understand the deep psychology of fear in difficult conversations, read the first chapter of my program Big Talk.)

Related Media Links

1. Video and audio links – Links on the Fierce Incorporated website with Susan Scott.
2. Companies, careers built or lost one conversation at time – An article published in a Seattle newspaper by Susan Scott discussing how conversations, one by one, shape our lives.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen
2. Review of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers
3. Review of The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Dale Carnegie
4. Review of Conversationally Speaking by Alan Garner
5. Review of Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

Have you ever struggled to negotiate something important to you like a pay raise? Have you ever felt anxious about talking something over with your partner? Are there issues you ignore because you’re too afraid to talk about it? Are you sick of arguing, feeling ignored, and getting no where in a tough conversation? Difficult Conversations is a solution to these many conversational problems.

Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen have studied situations described by the above questions at the Harvard Negotiation Project. Their findings come from diverse fields of study like cognitive therapy, social psychology, and communication theory. After analyzing, developing theories, and testing conversations where people struggle to effectively communicate in tough situations, the end result is Difficult Conversations.

The complete framework of the book explains the three conversations we have with ourselves and the other person in tough conversations:

1. The “What Happened?” Conversation has people learn each other’s stories of what occurred.
2. The Feelings Conversation discovers and expresses (not vents) emotions during the conversation.
3. The Identity Conversation finds how people attribute themselves to the discussed issues.

Each of the three conversations are discussed in-depth as the authors advise you what to focus on, common mistakes made, and general pieces of advice you will find directly speak to you. One particular piece that spoke to me is the assumption we know the truth. In this assumption we think the other person is wrong and we are right. The problem is the other person thinks the same thing – a sure formula for destructive conflict. When you shift to a learning conversation as you explore the three conversations, you can overcome these limited views.

The last chapter provides a complete dialog between two people as one of the individuals uses the entire Difficult Conversation’s framework. This is followed by a convenient summary of all the book’s main points (an excellent on-hand quick reference).

Overall, the language used is simple and easy to understand. You are shown conversations of what went wrong, what went right, and why this is so to help you talk about difficult issues and deal with difficult people.

Difficult Conversations is a leading book to learn how to talk about tough issues. I recommend you get it because we all have people to confront and problems to solve, while keeping the relationship in tact. You can grab your copy of the book now from Amazon by clicking here. (You may also want to check out my review of Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations. The books are related, but do not overlap.)

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott
2. Principles and Tips to Deal with Difficult People
3. Review of Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
4. Review of Conversationally Speaking by Alan Garner
5. Review of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers