How to deal with difficult people

1. Quotable quote

"If we select people cavalierly, let them wander around in a disoriented state, assign them to someone who hasn’t made a contribution to management in ten years, don’t match their skills with the demands of the job, give neither encouragement nor opportunity for new learning, provide no feedback, allow no avenues for personal problem handling, and make no effort to match rewards to performance, the result is guaranteed."

2. Smile & ponder

There are many wise sayings attributed to US President Abraham Lincoln, including this: ‘Some men are like the stump the old farmer had in his field - too hard to uproot, too knotty to split, too wet and soggy to burn.’

And when some neighbours asked what he would do in a case like that, he replied, ‘Well now, boys, like the old farmer did, I should just plough around it.’

Lincoln figured that that was the best way of dealing with the difficult people he encountered in life - and you can usually find a way around them too if you look long enough.

3. Here's an idea

It’s a fact of life: People are bothered by other people. Whether it’s the colleague who always stops by your office uninvited ‘to chat’ and ends up stealing 30 minutes of your time, or the person who doodles while you’re talking. If you let these things get to you, they’ll drive you to distraction and affect your productivity. …