How to engage with difficult people?

Difficult people at work come in every variety and you often have to deal with them. What are the characteristics that define labelling a person as difficult person is based on your self-esteem, your self-confidence, and your professional courage at work. Dealing with difficult people is either easy or challenging for you depending on the type of difficult person and the situation you face. The perception of someone being a difficult person is based on your experiences and conviction on your ability in dealing with him or her. Dealing with difficult people is much complex when they are attacking you, finding fault with you or undermining your professional contribution.

Here is what augurs well in dealing with such people:

1.Learn more about them and from their work or actions. That includes the positive and negative hues, their work, their professional expertise. Many a times, this helps in changing our perception towards them. When you start learning from them it often creates respect in their eyes about you making them change their behaviour towards you.

2.Another technique that may be deployed is to mirror them. Speak their language and display their behaviour. People often want to positively engage with people who think and act like themselves.

3.Work on building your relationship with such people. Sometimes more engagement with them helps in breaking the ice and making them start trusting you.

4.Start an open dialogue with such people explaining your true intent in building a great relationship with them.

5.When none of the above aspect deployed works just simply ignore them. Some of these people are insecure so they just need importance, the moment you ignore them their plans fail.