I shook my head as I sat on my computer at home, sipping a coffee. I felt sorry for him, but he didn’t need work – he needed a radical shift in reality with a series of self-probing questions, tips, skills, and advice to nail his desired job.

Whether you’re going for a retail, nursing, accounting, teacher, or government interview full-time or part-time over the phone, online, or in person, the following advice will help you ace any interview to get the job of your dreams.

Unemployment and Job-Misery Begins Before Interview Preparation

I could catapult many job interview tips at you because I’m a conversation skills coach and company owner, but I won’t because that’s not what you need. What will help you the most in getting the job you want is looking at how you approach job hunting and your interviews.

If you go into an interview wanting the job to solve your money worries – to help your life – you won’t get the job. Few employers hire out of pity. They suffer from their own problems and want to pay you to alleviate these dilemmas.

The guy at the start of this article who wanted a job didn’t care about me. He didn’t want to add value to my customers. He didn’t think about how he can increase my sales. He didn’t care about broken website code, business partnerships to be made, or traffic to be attracted. He didn’t want to relive my itches. He was focused on himself.

Most self-absorbed communication harms you. You don’t make friends by bragging about yourself, listing your accomplishments, and ignoring another’s needs. Job seekers, unfortunately, do exactly this at interviews. Narcissistic-like individuals talk about themselves, their skills, their past, and why they want the job.

The first and most important leap to take to nail the job interview you want or move ahead in your career is to solve the employer’s problems. Talk about your skills, past, and why you want the job by relating it to the employer’s wants and needs. Without that relation, your abilities are open to misinterpretation and ignorance. Forget your needs for the moment – once you provide value to others, they become determined to reciprocate your efforts and keep you.

Empathize with the interviewer by placing yourself in his or her shoes. Constantly ask yourself, “What is their need at the moment?” If you can answer this question in any communication, you’re in the top five percent of communicators in the world.

No one cares about your bachelor degree or your intelligence. It’s what your degree or intelligence does that gets you hired.

I speak for many companies by saying that what’s on paper gets you hired, but what happens between you and people gets you fired. Poor human resource managers deny or accept a job candidate merely on experiences and qualities (what’s seen on a resume), while great HR managers go beyond shallow resumes and cognitive tests and really see if the candidate is a determined winner. I recommend you get Topgrading, which was written for company owners, because it helps craft you into an A-player companies want.

Good Communication, Great Person

In a fierce economy, today is more important than ever to master your communication skills. We will always need to talk, listen, and connect with one another.

Start developing your communication right now in everyday life. How you socialize shows in how you interact with customers and coworkers. I have a saying, “How you do something is how you do anything.”

Skills you think take time to see are apparent to good interviewers. Seemingly minor signals of unconscious skill show in your body language. If you’re not immediately friendly to strangers in everyday life, you won’t immediately befriend the interviewer who will then project that feeling into the future and assume you cannot quickly befriend customers.

The most attractive employees are good communicators and good communicators develop themselves in their own time. This is something I’ve never heard anywhere else that I believe makes or breaks critical moments in a career. Attractive skills, such as your honesty in being unable to answer a question or your calmness when someone is agitated, must be developed outside of the workplace. Unemployment and job-misery begins before the interview.

Little-Known Conversation Techniques to Seduce the Interviewer and Get the Job

All principles of good conversation apply to the interview (from the introduction, small talk, humor, self-disclosure, interest, and open body language). Any time you feel lost or confused, think what an enjoyable conversation entails. After all, interviews are a conversation between the candidate and interviewer.

Start by standing and introducing yourself to the interviewer instead of waiting for an introduction. Lean forward to give a solid, slow web-to-web handshake.

Next, initiate conversation. Talk about the person’s lovely office, a plant, or photo. Drop a comment about a worker you spotted or a sign you read on your way in. The conversation builds rapport and relaxes each of you – the interviewer can be nervous as well! My Big Talk course offers a complete training on how to effortlessly talk and make friends with strangers.

Show interest in the business. Study its history before the interview. If it’s a smaller business and you’re being interviewed by its owner, be curious behind the owner’s motives for starting the business. The person will become animated and talk about the business’ foundations! He or she will walk away from your interview thinking you were a great person.

A good conversation skill that is also a way to show interest in the business is to ask questions during the interview. Walk into the interview with at least three solid questions planned, which gives you backup questions if the interviewer asks one or two before you.

Before I taught communication skills, I had a group interview for the position of a night-fill worker at a supermarket. The human resources manager running the interview talked for 10 minutes then asked, “Does anyone have any questions?” The room was silent. You could see the twinge in her lips that indicated her disappointment in our non-responsiveness.

Just before she was about to move on, I asked how she got into her managerial position because I wanted to understand to her and what it takes to be promoted. She smiled and talked for five minutes about the company’s internal way of promoting employees. I think I easily got the job because of my question and display of interest.

Good questions to ask in the interview include:

• “What happened to the previous person in this position?”
• “What results do you expect from the successful candidate’s first year?”
• “How does the company lead its teams? Like, are workers given independence to make their own decisions or is it highly determined by upper management?”
• “How would you describe the company’s culture?”
• “In your opinion, what’s the most important thing someone new to the company should know so they and the company benefit?”

There are three real subtle benefits of asking questions. Firstly, questions show curiosity and interest. Secondly, you look better than other interviewees. Most candidates are too busy talking about themselves, not curious or concerned about solving the company’s problems. Thirdly, you subtly qualify the company to match your own needs. A subtle seduction technique is to make the other party work for you. Humans value what they earn. Employers will value you more if you have job opportunities elsewhere and are a little picky over how they can fulfill your needs. How very counter-intuitive!

Once a question is answered or you learn an important point about the business, write a note for yourself even if you have good memory. The power in this technique comes from how it makes the other person feel. You’ll look well-prepared and trustworthy. It’s amazing how much your credibility increases by writing down what someone tells you.

How to Appear Confident in an Interview

Believe your words. If you don’t have confidence in yourself, others won’t have confidence in you.

One of the best ways to show others confidence is through your voice. Speak at a good volume with relaxation. A louder voice is physiological confidence that boosts your psychological confidence.

Bodily stress and tension wrecks havoc on your vocals when you try to be perfect. Shift your focus from yourself to how you fill the company’s needs like I mentioned before. You will relax, communicate confidence through your voice, and show attractive warmth.

Another technique taken from my Big Talk that I recommend to quickly boost your confidence in an interview is to think the interviewer is an old friend. You can try more absurd visualizations that reframes the person interviewing you into a strange situation. Imagine the person nervously being interviewed by another manager or lazily lounging in front of the television.

Similar to what I said before, however, the most effective way to have confidence in an interview is to work on it in every day. What goes inside the interview often reflects how you live.

Insider’s Secret to Be Comfortable and Get Hired

Go to the company beforehand and introduce yourself to a few employees saying you’re interested in working for the company. Ask the employees for their thoughts on the company, tips for the interview, recommended dress, and any insider secrets that could give you an edge. Use these people to see if the company is worth working for before you waste further time in the screening process.

Mention the names of the people you talked to in the interview. You’ll subliminally make the hiring manager feel you already work for the company!

Also compliment those you talked to. We love people who love people. How do you think the hiring manager will feel hearing about the great workforce?

When the interview ends, reward yourself regardless of the outcome. Interviews can be scary so it helps to appreciate yourself. Job interviews can be tough enough without self-criticism.

If your interview is a success and you get the job, tell the person offering the good news that you want 24 hours to think it over. The company will value you more. Anyway, you’ll probably need the time to evaluate other offers once you follow the advice in this article to ace any interview.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. 4 Reasons Advice and Other Solutions Kill Relationships
2. Just Be Yourself – Why It’s Bad Advice: Being Yourself is the Problem
3. On Achieving Goals – Part 2: How to Be Self-Motivated

Why It’s Hard to Communicate Well in Conflict When Stressed

If you’re like me, you find it hard to communicate in stressful moments. Scientifically, it is impossible to communicate well when under stress. The body experiences a primal response that agitates people in conflict. A stressed guy will tense his facial expressions, breathe shallowly, raise his voice, respond faster, and not think clearly. (If you controlled these, you wouldn’t be stressed). Not only does the tension hurt your communication, it also creates a viral effect as the emotional rigidity infects those you talk to.

Conflict is probably synonymous for you with stress. To be in conflict with someone is to be stressed. For me, however, I can have my mental and physical tension under control so I can communicate effectively to improve my relationships. If I don’t manage my stress, it inevitably gets the better of me, as it will to you.

Stress makes us mentally ill. A psychiatrist could diagnose you with depression, mania, psychosis, bipolar disorder, or another mental illness when you are stressed. The difference between you and someone diagnosed with one of these mental health problems is the time you and they spend in those states. A person diagnosed with depression feels down for most of the day while you may temporarily be depressed only when you are under loads of stress. No wonder it’s difficult to communicate well when stressed.

Fight, Flight, or Freeze Response

Stress in conflict evokes the fight, flight, or freeze responses. An argument, disagreement, or confrontation elevates tension as you yell, withdraw, stand confused. You do things you later regret.

Aggressive behavior towards another person temporarily feels okay, but then reality kicks in as you feel even more stressed from hurting the person. When you are submissive as you try your best to hide the tension, your suppressed emotions eat at you, which then hurts your relationships.

When under stress, your communication style will change in response to the situation. You can go from a cool, collected person one moment, yet when a stressful situation impinges your tolerable threshold your calm style can quickly shift to aggressive or submissive behaviors. What behavior you fall back on in stressful situations is the one comfortable to you in the past that offered momentary protection.

When someone has surpassed their tolerable degree of tension, telling them to get their act together or how ineffective their current communication is, does not work. It won’t work for you either. It’s human extinct to block out external factors, such as other people’s feelings, and listen to internal ones as your interpersonal communication skills decline. Better communication in intense conflict is a matter of managing stress otherwise it is next to impossible to deal with conflict.

“What Did I Say?” – Memory Loss and Other Dangers of Stress

Stress motivates us to take action, but it too often works against us. We yell, withdraw, or shut-down in tense communication. Our bodies produce cortisol, known as the “stress hormone”, to compel us into action. Without this double-edged hormone, we would accomplish little. If you are completely relaxed in conflict and untrained in good communication skills, you could overlook the problematic issue or give an unsympathetic response.

Research has shown cortisol to improve cognitive functioning. Too much cortisol, however, causes impairment. If you have ever forgotten what you said in a verbal fight, cortisol has literally shut off short-term memory. Cortisol obtrudes neurotransmitters that are chemicals responsible for communication between neurons and other cells. That is why you can memorize a speech 50 times and forget it when you present it. A stressful crisis temporarily results in a blank mind.

Stanford neuroscience professor Robert Sapolsky found that cortisol also causes long-term memory loss. When the receptors for cortisol located in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for long-term memory, gets flooded overtime, it melts like microwaved Swiss cheese.

The affects of stress are too numerous to list here. From rapid aging of the body and heart disease, to poor sleep and skin conditions, the effects are real. You need to learn techniques to manage your stress; not just for your communication, but also for your health.

Stress Reduction Tips: 9 Key Lessons for Intelligent Stress Management

Because we have primal responses that arise deep from within our neurology, we need to attack the issue at that level. Thinking positively or talking yourself through stress isn’t going to reduce tension. I have developed nine effective ways and techniques to manage stress that you can use to keep calm in stressful moments so you can communicate better and live a happier life:

1. Prevention is the best cure. The best technique to deal with stress is to stop it before it begins. Create the appropriate measures, boundaries, and strategies to interrupt rising tensions. If the tension between two people rises beyond a safe level, one strategy is to pause, walk away, punch a pillow, and take slow deep breathes before commencing the conversation. You can incorporate other stress management techniques listed below into your plan to be more calm in conflict.

2. Accept your feelings. Never tell yourself you shouldn’t feel what you do. Do not say, “I shouldn’t be feeling stressed right now.” You must accept your feelings otherwise they will persist or repress into forms that severely affect your mental health and ability to effectively communicate. When you accept your stress, you move one step forward to taking personal responsibility.

3. Accept responsibility for how you feel. It is tempting and too easy to release your stress on other people. Do not treat people inappropriately. If you treat people in a way they don’t want to be treated, you make them tense, which they will be happy to put back on you.

Blame can only make you more stressed because anxiety is directly related to events within your control. What is beyond your reach makes you anxious. If you blame a spouse for making you angry by yelling, the only visible solution to you is for your spouse to lower his or her voice. Your anxiety and stress will continue to rise because you have little direct influence over your spouse’s voice.

When you accept responsibility, you eliminate blame. You live in truth. You do not become a victim of others. You take control of your feelings. Your new levels of responsibility cause you to do something about how you feel.

If someone causes you stress, address the person. Explain to them how you feel, why you feel that way, and what can be done to fix the problem. Do not worsen the problem by blaming them for how you feel, but focus on the problem. Be problem-oriented; not person-oriented.

4. Breathe. When tension in your body rises, you automatically take shallow breathes. This is one of the first stages prior to full fight, flight, or freeze responses that hurt effective communication. When your stress levels rise, take several deep, slow breathes and you will instantly reduce your stress levels.

5. Take time out. A walk away is guaranteed to refresh your mind. Don’t call for the travel agent to book a Caribbean cruise though, because a temporary break is all you need. Go for a walk or workout at the gym. Be active to release hormones that counter stress. Exercise is the body’s emotional reset button.

Absence from the situation that created the tension takes your mind off the problem and gives you clearer thoughts to attack the problem. Be sure to address the problem after your time out, however, otherwise you will only have temporarily avoided the real issue.

6. Be flexible. Stress is like the sunrise and sunset. It is inevitable. It is a part of your human body. Therefore, the best way to deal with it is to change your behavior and communication.

Be soft; not brittle. Recognize signals of stress by reading people’s verbal and nonverbal language, then adjust yourself accordingly. Be flexible by going a bit out of your way for them to assist their temporary needs and wants. Don’t run around the world for them, but do be more aware and respondent of them. This can lead you to less stress.

7. Discuss the problem afterwards. Combine this tip with the prior tip of remaining flexible and you have two keys to manage tense people. You need to address the problem following the stressful moment otherwise destructive, repetitious behavior occurs. Also, if there is someone you know that finds it difficult to manage their stress in communication, you can refer them to this article by clicking the “ShareThis” link at the bottom of this article.

8. Ask others about your responses in stressful moments. You are to do this because you cannot provide an accurate self-assessment when stressed. Your short-term memory loss makes it impossible to recall information.

Also, an awareness of your behavior can trigger a pattern interrupt. If the person says you consistently yell when stressed, raising your voice can trigger an awareness that your stress needs to reduce before the conversation continues.

9. Listen to binaural beats. Discovered by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove in 1839, binaural beats describes the low-frequency pulsations in the brain created by different frequencies played into each ear. The brain integrates the two sounds to form a third sound that relaxes the mind.

In terms of stress, binaural beats is a miracle. A correctly made binaural beat will scientifically make your brain produce alpha waves, which is the same brain wave you have when resting. That wonderful feeling you have when lying in bed almost asleep can be produced by binaural beats. Imagine how better your life would be by simply putting on a headphone the next time you’re stressed as you enter a relaxed state at will!

If you’re after binaural beats, Paul Kleinmeulman has a good program that includes a series of binaural beats for different purposes. You can check out his program here, where you will learn more about the proven science behind binaural beats, which can make you motivated, sleep better, intensify your focus, learn efficiently, and keep relaxed.

Conflict does not need to be synonymous with stress. Neither has to make you miserable. Stress can be a good thing – just like conflict is good for creativity, openness, and growth – when it is controlled with the above tips.

Your body experiences stress because it is threatened in conflict. Do something about it. You don’t want to feel the same way in a fight as you do when watching the Simpsons. Harness this primal response and you will be communicating more effectively in your next confrontation.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. How to Manage and Deal with an Aggressive Boss
2. The Complete Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Process for Compassion, Understanding, and Peace
3. The Benefits of Communication Skills
4. How and When to End a Long-Term Relationship
5. Getting Over a Relationship Break Up

The number of untrained email users is staggering. Former Chief Solutions Officer of Yahoo! Tim Sanders estimates that 90% of business communication is email based and only 10% of email users receive adequate training. When this statistic is combined with data from a market research firm Radicati Group who say the 1.2 billion email users in 2007 will increase to 1.6 billion in 2011, an estimate of 1.44 billion people will be untrained in email by 2011. Your workplace and business likely suffers from poor email etiquette – and it isn’t going to get better anytime soon unless you doing something about it with the rules of email etiquette in this article.

Good Netiquette

Email etiquette, commonly referred to as “netiquette”, defines the rules of email communication. Netiquette is important because an email sent cannot be retrieved. You cannot reach through the computer cables to retrieve an email sent to your boss in a regretful emotional outlash where you swore to destroy his dictatorship.

Though you probably hate the thought of writing a grammatically correct email to a friend, netiquette in everyday email communication helps clarity, understanding, and productivity. Your emails will get the proper understanding they deserve. From having the right mindset when seated, to sending an email, here are the most important netiquette rules to follow so you’re one of the 160 million users in 2011 that know what they’re doing when they check their inbox:

1. Emotional emails. Do not send an email when you are angry. You could say things you later regret and the receiver of your little outburst will have a record of your email that could be used against you. Too many careers have been destroyed from angry emails. Your email may appear okay as you compose it, but let time clear your mind so you don’t regret clicking the “send” button.

I also recommend you reread your email to check for sentences, phrases, and words that can be interpreted another way to your main intent. You may come off as rude even though you try to be nice. A simple joke you think is funny may be offensive to someone else simply because they misinterpreted the joke. The lack of nonverbal communication in email makes it a poor medium to communicate emotion.

2. Unnecessary information. Most people waste too much time browsing their inbox the way it is without having to read long messages. Do people a favor by keeping your emails short. Provide the necessary facts and cut the fat.

Having said that, you still need to provide all the information upfront whenever possible. It is frustrating and time-consuming to ask questions for more information that could have easily been provided in the initial email.

3. HTML. You do not need to know exactly what is HyperText Markup Language (HTML), but basically it is used to make websites look pretty. Making text bold in email uses HTML. When you copy and paste emails from websites, you may also unknowingly copy the HTML code across. The HTML in the email you send does not always look like the email someone receives. Funny enough, the message sent is not the message received. Some email programs are not HTML compatible so when they receive HTML emails, weird HTML code might show and other formatting issues may occur.

Simply provide a website link if you are going to copy an entire web page. If you want to copy snippets of information, not only do you risk breaking copyright laws, but at your discretion you can copy the text across to a text file program (such as Notepad, not Microsoft Word) and then copy the text from there into your email program. Copying the text to a text file program, such as Notepad, removes HTML and prevents weird formatting issues.

4. Reply to all. It is frustrating to receive emails from group members who simply say “Yes, I can come” or “No” when you do not need to receive them. Stop being lazy. Please take the small amount of time to address your email to the specific people your email is intended for.

5. Forwarding to all. I am a big victim of this email mistake! When subscribing to my newsletter, I advise the person to add me to their address book or whitelist to ensure my emails reach them. Because of this, and having an email list that contains tens of thousands of people, I am in many people’s address book. Often, subscribers receive an email and forward it to everyone in their address book. The result for me is a daily cleanup of forwarded emails, which often contain attachments that clog data efficiency.

Chain emails are so annoying! The next time you get an email with a poem, story, or series of images you love, keep them to yourself. A lovely story about patience you forward to friends may infuriate them.

6. Making people’s email addresses known. It is considered rude to send out an email to several people making their email address visible in the “To” box. Unless the recipients know each other and are comfortable sharing their email addresses, avoid this bad mistake. You can use the Bcc (blind carbon copy) function of emails to hide recipients’ email addresses. The Bcc function will ensure everyone receives the email, but it looks like the email is addressed to a specific individual.

7. Removed message thread. Here is another email etiquette mistake that I am a victim of everyday: not having the replied message in the sent message. Not having the replied message in the sent message is almost the face-to-face conversational equivalent of being bashed across the head and forgetting what was discussed in the conversation. Based on the hundreds of emails I receive everyday, I estimate 10% of people do not attach their replied message. I easily forget what was sent in an email someone replied to because I frequently have discussions with multiple people at the same time.

Make it easy for people to know what you are talking about by ensuring their message you reply to is attached. Google’s email service, Gmail, is great at keeping track of past messages. Be sure to change your email settings so that messages you reply to get included in your reply.

8. Use of abbreviations. Friend to friend or family member to family member, abbreviations can be fine. It is entirely up to you. Problems arise when abbreviation usage in emails carries over into the workplace and other areas where professionalism is needed. Here is a useful video on email etiquette that I thought you might find interesting:

A three minute Fox Providence presentation discussing email etiquette. It focuses on professionalism by avoiding abbreviations.

9. Unknown abbreviations. AFAIK 404 but I’ll POAHF because I TILII. Do you know what that means? Very few people do. It means: As far as I know I have no clue, but I’ll put on a happy face because I tell it like it is.

Good email etiquette avoids unknown abbreviations. Though you can get away with abbreviations when emailing friends, for example – because it is an efficient technique for a slow typer – communication problems occur when the receiver is unaware of the abbreviation. What may seem apparent to you might confuse the recipient of your email. How would you like it if a friend sent you an email with ADO, YOOAD, WWMT, and other weird abbreviations? (I just made those last few ) You would feel annoyed at having to clarify something the person should realize in the first place.

10. Poor subject heading. If you leave the subject field empty or simply put “Re:” in the field, you avoid an important function of email communication. When someone receives an email, it is common for them to quickly scan the subject heading of each email to see what emails need to be firstly addressed. Your goal in personal emails is not to write the most captivating subject heading so people open your email. Write an honest and specific subject heading that reflects your email message. Instead of writing “HELP!!” to your telecommunications company, you could write “Help Needed With Phone Wires”. Sometimes, if I think a subject heading is important for personal emails, I can take up to a minute to come up with a good subject.

11. Poor sent time. Be weary of the time you send your email. This mistake is dependent on a few things. Firstly, with the worldwide connectivity and never-ending discussion available over the Internet, it does not matter what time you send an email to someone living in a different time zone. Secondly, some people could not care what time you send your email as they only care about reading what you have to say. You do, however, need to be careful of the time you send emails to some people such as coworkers, managers, and clients, for example.

A job candidate’s email containing a resume sent to the human resources department at 3am will not look good as it sits in the inbox. It may jeopardize the job candidate’s chances of working with the company. Send an email at another time if you think the recipient will judge you poorly based on the time you send it.

12. Excessive Capitalization. IT IS CONSIDERED RUDE TO TYPE IN CAPITALS. Typing in capitals is the digital equivalent of yelling in someone’s face. Hopefully, you would not yell in someone’s face so do not do it in the digital world. On the other end of the spectrum, do not type all your text in lower case. It is simple grammar.

13. No spell checking. I am guilty of this a few times and have been pulled up by the grammar police for teaching communication and misspelling words. (Apparently I am not allowed to misspell words!) Spell check your more formal emails. Most popular email providers should provide the option of spell checking. If your email service does not have a spell checker, you can copy your email into a word editing document to spell check it.

14. Poor use of attachments. Any email attachment over one mega byte (approximately 1000KB) is pushing email etiquette rules. Not everyone has broadband or cable, and these people do not want to spend 5 minutes downloading an unnecessary file. For large attachments, you are better off using file upload services such as Mega File Upload and 2shared. With these services, you upload a file to their website and they give you a link you can send to others where they can download the file.

Another rule for email attachments is to consider the format of your attachment. Not everyone can open a file with the .odt extension.

15. Requesting delivery and read receipts. Delivery and read receipts is a feature in all email programs (that I’m aware of). The feature lets you send an email and have the recipient confirm it was received. You are notified with an email that they received your email only if they confirm it. The feature is therefore an unreliable way to check if someone receives your email. It also adds more clutter to an already busy inbox. In most cases, you don’t need to know if an email was received because modern technology with email deliverability is good.

If you need to check whether your email was received, ask the person in your email to reply saying they got your message. If your message is really that important, which it rarely is over email, maybe you should phone the person. Do not blame the recipient of your email for a problem you can control.

16. Write. Send. Edit. That is obviously in the wrong order if you follow good email etiquette. We sometimes think about editing our email once we have sent it. Get this common email mistake in the right order: 1) Write, 2) Edit, and 3) Send. Wow! Submit. Done.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Top 15 Dumb Mistakes People Make in Relationships
2. Barriers and Mistakes in Apologizing
3. Ways to Resolve Conflict When Others Avoid It

The law does little to protect victims of workplace conflict. Nearly all laws do not take into account verbal conflict, but if the verbal and other emotional abuse approaches physical abuse, the issue can become a legal concern. The typical employee who faces a difficult manager, however, needs to handle the workplace bully through a series of skills one can get in this article.

Most people who lack the communication skills to deal with a bad boss either:

• Endure the bullying. They endure the bullying boss and intimidation. These people may lack self-respect or assertiveness. They may think their job will be put at risk if they address their boss about the problem.
• Bully the bully. These people face their boss by reciprocating their boss’ aggression. It is quite common for the problem to intensify as the two individuals yell at one another in intensifying conflict.

First Common Reaction: Endure the Bullying

The first reaction to a bullying boss is a passive response. In this response you forgo your needs while your boss tramples you. The last thing you should do during abuse is accept the abuse.

You must address the issue in the correct manner otherwise your confidence, happiness – and in this situation – your work will suffer. Recipients of aggressive behavior who incorrectly handle aggression are known to develop health problems such as strokes, heart attacks, suicide, migraines, escalated stress levels, insomnia, and terrifying nightmares. One anonymous person often dreamed her boss pointing a gun at employees so they would complete their work.

Passive people suppress their own needs and get dominated by others. They live in frustration. Their anger bottles up inside. They lack the communication skills to address the problem, hoping the abusive person stops bullying out of goodwill.

Sometimes people in this first category of responding to an aggressive boss avoid the issue out of fear. If you currently experience workplace intimidation, you may accept it because you fear repercussions that could arise if you face the problem. You may avoid defending yourself in a work situation – especially with someone that has authoritative power – from fear of losing your job, being demoted, or undergoing further abuse.

I’m not hear to tell you your fears are irrational. A fear of losing your job is a real threat because most people who stick up for themselves do so aggressively, which creates further problems. The end result for people that choose this first response is a win for the bully and a loss for the passive person.

Second Common Reaction: Bully the Bully

The second common reaction to facing a bully is aggression. People who aggressively defend themselves usually have more confidence than passive individuals. They think the only way to get what they want is through retaliation. It becomes fire against fire. When an aggressive employee faces an aggressive boss, a fight starts as two individuals take to a verbal boxing ring, mentally beating each other’s minds.

People can be aggressive for several reasons:

• They were abused by their parents at an early age or placed under other emotional trauma.
• They are mentally ill. I’m not jokingly referring to a mental illness, but a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia or a personality disorder.
• They think the only way to stop someone else’s abusive behavior is to reciprocate the abuse.
• The aggression is a release of anger often caused from responding passively like the first situation. This type of behavior is otherwise known as “passive-aggressive behavior” where the person is frequently passive, but randomly explodes to release their frustration. After the occasional and often unexpected outburst, the person returns to his or her passive behavior.
• The person is in a high pressure environment. This type of aggressive behavior is common in work environments where individuals are under high loads of stress.
• The aggressive individual may try to prove his superiority, toughness, control, discipline, or results-focus to others through aggressive behavior.

While aggression in the workplace may create sufficient productivity, it is strongly correlated to a high turnover rate (said to be an average of 1.5 years) and other commitment problems. Employees fake sick days, become miserable, sabotage work, and lose passion for work. Aggressive managers create unproductive employees who comply to their superiors, yet the employees stay under the radar doing nothing that could draw attention. The aggression exchanged between the employee and manager is a loss outcome for each.

A Third Rare Action: Assertive Communication with the Boss

The first common reaction is a passive response. The second common reaction is an aggressive response. A median response known as “assertiveness” exists between these two common reactions, which produces a win-win response. Where passive communication fails to respect yourself and aggressive communication fails to respect the other person, assertive communication respects both individuals.

Assertive communication techniques can stop bullying, stop your fear of facing difficult issues, and build your self-confidence to create a nice working relationship with your boss. Assertive skills can transform your inner and outer conflict.

A Step-by-Step Approach with Techniques to Cure a Bad Boss

In this section I will share a series of techniques in a scenario to help you face an aggressive boss. Learn from the scenario and use as many techniques as you can in everyday life because assertive communication does more than help you handle an aggressive boss. Assertiveness helps you face aggressive people and other difficult personality types.

The first step to handle an aggressive person begins before you open your mouth. Prior to approaching your boss about the problem, ask yourself: “What can I change in my behavior to solve the aggression?” Asking yourself this question helps you own your behavior. It builds your responsibility and stops you blaming other people for what you can control. Sometimes this first step may solve the problem and eliminate aggression because you were the problem.

Additionally, before you approach your boss, develop a plan of what to say and how you can solve the problem. Prepare to make the conversation productive. Though you may think of good solutions when preparing for the conversation, remain flexible and willing to adjust your behavior to satisfy your boss. A willingness to compromise is assertive.

Once you approach your boss, be calm and responsive. Calmness is not enough because it can show ignorance and increase aggression from a lack of responsiveness. Behaving unresponsive hurts empathy and makes it difficult to diffuse an aggressive person’s emotions. You don’t want to ignore an angry boss!

When you are calm yet responsive, you will not become aggressive. When you remove your aggression, you will reduce your boss’ aggressive communication because the two of you are no longer in a destructive cycle of anger. Fire needs some sort of fuel to stay alight. By keeping calm yet remaining responsive, you remove the psychological fuel needed to keep your boss’ aggressive fire burning.

Have the right mindset of resolving the problem at hand. When faced with a difficult person, it is easy think you are right. Guess what? Your boss also thinks he is right! This is why conflict feels like swimming with a shark – you sometimes have to compromise yourself to move the problem forward. Be the first one to step towards problem resolution.

Now that you understand these concepts and techniques, it’s time to approach your boss. Find the best time to talk with your boss. Do not try and solve this problem in an intense emotional situation. You may need to wait until the end of the day, or even the end of the week, until you believe the boss is approachable.

As you address your boss, the best thing you can do is ask for his opinion and point of view on the matter. If the person is unaware of his aggression, bring up a specific situation where the person became aggressive. This is an excellent technique that builds an awareness of someone who refuses to acknowledge their aggression.

When you begin a tough conversation by asking for the person’s point of view, instead of blurting what you think and feel about the situation, your persuasive ability builds from a newfound perception. You may see a new side to the story when you practice good listening skills. Asking for your boss’ point of view will help you understand, and even help, your boss understand why he is aggressive. Your boss will feel understood when you actively listen, which can lead to many great outcomes.

After your boss has made suggestions, you can begin to give your ideas about the problem. Keep calm and stay focused on resolving the problem while avoiding personal attacks. Ask for your boss’ feedback on ideas. Make it a joint solution so each of you follow through with the final plan. A mutual solution is always followed through by both parties more consistently than a solution forced on one person.

Take note of the positive points your boss shows in his behavior during the discussion then compliment him on these. Tell him how happy you are for him to listen and be in the conversation with you. Keep the conversation positive as problem solving can seem negative – even though it is good for people.

If none of these techniques work – provided you have talked with others about the problem and tried your best to stop your boss from behaving aggressively – ask yourself: “What’s more valuable to me: my happiness or my work?” Without knowing your exact situation, your happiness is more valuable. If your boss continues to treat you poorly, have the courage to respect yourself, stand up for your wellbeing, and solve the problem. If solving the problem means quitting your job because of an awful boss, so be it.

Work is a task many people hate for 40 years of their life. It does not have to be that way. You no longer have to be in an unproductive, unhappy working relationship when you follow the advice in this article. You can develop a productive, and possibly joyful, working relationship for your own good and your organization’s good. Value yourself and do something about your aggressive boss the next time you go to work. Your livelihood depends on it.

(The techniques presented in this article have been adapted from my Communication Secrets of Powerful People program. This program is a revolutionary way to charismatically change minds – even in difficult situations that contain a cruel boss.)

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. The Four Parenting Styles in Passive, Aggressive, and Assertive Behavior
2. How to Manage Stress in Relationship Communication: Keep Calm with Scientific Stress Management
3. Principles and Tips to Deal with Difficult People
4. Controlling People – Signs of a Controlling Person and How to Deal with Them
5. Why People Remain Quiet, Shy, and Non-Assertive: The Benefits of Passive Behavior and Communication

The skill that gives you these benefits is effective communication. Communication has too many benefits to list because the skill enhances many areas of one’s life. Any interaction with people or lack of it can improve with communication.

Rudyard Kipling said, “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” Kipling’s quote fails to fully describe communication because it is far more than words – it also incorporates nonverbal channels of communication. Imagine the powerful benefits of communication now.

Here are a list of communication benefits that tell you the what, why, and how this amazing skill will change your life:

Communication increases your happiness. You have probably heard money cannot buy happiness. You become happy by taking the right actions. Think about it. Happiness is at the core of your actions because happiness is not conditional. You don’t become happy by getting a certain object or person in your life. When you take action on learning communication, you empower yourself to be happy.

While developing your communication skills makes you happy, at the same time your happiness increases as you minimize situations like destructive conflict that make you stressed and unhappy. Effective communication skills makes you happier by helping you reduce the frequency and severity of verbal fights, manage anger, express yourself to “get things off your back”, and change other situations to increase positive feelings.

Communication determines your attractiveness. The law of attraction states that you are a living magnet. You attract the people and resources in your life based on your internal self. Get excited because you do have invisible forces that draw and repel people. This is not mystical mumbo-jumbo. If you want to attract a fun, loving, positive, and caring person, you have to become a fun, loving, positive, and caring person.

You can control many factors in personal development to attract people into your life. Some attractive qualities that communication can boost is your confidence, self-esteem, social life, and conversational skills. These are universally attractive qualities.

Without communication, attraction dies. Physical appearance can only get you so far. Communication makes you interesting, connects you with people, builds friendships, and attracts a partner. Pick-up artists use communication to build attraction and get physically intimate with women in hours and sometimes minutes.

Communication fires up intimacy. How do people become open in a relationship? Good communication, of course, because it is the only bridge between a relationship. Communication is the relationship. When communication dies, so does the relationship. It is only through good communication that two persons intimately connect with one another.

Communication increases love given and love received. This benefit of communication ties in with intimacy. Without good communication, love becomes a plant without water. You can love people more than you think by changing the way you talk and developing active listening skills – such skills show respect and love. Giving love is the best way to receive love.

Communication makes you more popular. Though I don’t have a primary goal when teaching you communication to make you the most liked person in school, town, or club, communication does make you more popular. Once you develop good conversational skills with a positive energy, your number of friends is only limited by the time you talk with people.

Communication increases your success. John Johanson and Carrie Fried did a 2002 study published in the Teaching of Psychology Journal where they asked graduates what skill contributed the most to their success. The number one answer was interpersonal skills. Drew Appleby in a well known psychology magazine “Eye on Psi Chi” asked 39 employers what job skills they want in job candidates. Interpersonal skills was number one again. World renowned personal business consultant Brian Tracy in Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life says the highest paid intelligence in the United States is interpersonal intelligence. A person with such intelligence understands people’s feelings and desires – and employers pay big bucks for someone with these skills.

Communication makes you relaxed. Stress relates to how we manage ourselves with the world. You can become more relaxed by assertively telling someone “no” if they ask you to do something you don’t want to do. You can relax and no longer worry about the world’s reactions if you respond from a powerful source of control within yourself. (Read this article to learn of effective stress management techniques in communication.)

Communication makes you more satisfied with life. You receive satisfaction when you fulfill a need or desire. To get what you want, either someone gives it to you or you get it yourself. You cannot control what someone gives you (although you can influence them), which means in order to be satisfied you must learn how to get what you want. You do this by improving your persuasion, negotiation, and influence skills. Develop these areas of communication to grow as a person so you fulfill your needs and desires for satisfaction.

Communication gives you self-control. We interact with people everyday and often do things we later regret. Communication skills can increase your self-control to help you manage impulsive behavior. Self-control is beyond not doing actions; it also involves doing the right things.

Communication helps you understand people. This occurs at two levels. Firstly, knowledge of good communication helps you understand human behavior in general. Secondly, it helps you directly understand people you talk with as you explore their emotions and what really matters to them.

Rarely do we understand people to the level they want. Effective communication helps you see someone’s emotions, understand their emotions, and communicate at the level of emotions to powerfully connect the two of you in a way people rarely experience.

Communication helps you understand yourself. Do you know why you respond negatively when someone gives you criticism? Why do you feel occasional surges of anger towards someone you love? How do you overcome fears that stop you from talking with that hot chick or guy?

If you’re like most people, you don’t understand your behavior and this hurts you everyday. Not even I fully understand myself in a way that lets me use my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual resources to my potential. No one ever will. You will never have the complete answers to these questions, nor do you need them, but many problem behaviors solvable through communication no longer need to block your desired way of living.

This is a small list of the many benefits communication skills can give you. There is an abundance of additional benefits effective communication creates such as managed anger, increased likelihood of a job promotion, better teamwork, and effective leadership skills, but hopefully the list gives you a great idea of the impact this glorious skill can have on your life. Experience the power of communication and let it supercharge your life today by signing up to my free newsletter here.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Why People Remain Quiet, Shy, and Non-Assertive: The Benefits of Passive Behavior and Communication
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. The Greatest 15 Myths of Communication
5. How to Manage Stress in Relationship Communication: Keep Calm with Scientific Stress Management