Difficult Employees
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Do you find yourself encountering more and more people who are uncompromising, overbearing, resentful, uncooperative, manipulative or just plain pushy? Whether you are dealing with angry patients, overworked office staff, curt insurance representatives or aggressive salespersons, each situation challenges your communication skills and your patience. As the level of stress rises in health care (and elsewhere), the frequency of such encounters is also likely to increase. Judging from the volume of books and workshops on the subject, dealing with difficult people is a growing concern for everyone. If you have been exposed to any of the literature on this subject, you know there are a variety of tools for pinpointing personality types and intricate plans of action for dealing with certain behaviors. For example, using a scale that measures whether a particular individual seems to be direct or indirect, supportive or nonsupportive, you would assign to that person such labels as Sherman tank, sniper, time bomb, stone wall or complainer or you could use animal names like bull, fox, eagle, peacock and dove. Each identifier conveys a set of behaviors and a corresponding plan for dealing with that type of individual. But when an irate patient is sitting in your exam room or a weary receptionist confronts you in the hallway, do you really have the tiIf you want to foster effective communication with difficult people, first realize that you only have control over your own behavior. You can't control how someone else acts, but you can influence to some degree how they respond to you. Often, the key is to set an example...