Employing Differences, Episode 180: How do we deal with this difficult person? (Part 2)

[00:00:00] Paul: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:12] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:14] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:16] Karen: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, 'How do we deal with this difficult person?' Part two. 

[00:00:26] Paul: This is the second half of a two-part episode. On last week's episode, episode 179, we talked about how we oftentimes find ourselves in a situation, in a group, where there's one person whose behavior is identified as a problem. And we get ourselves into the situation of thinking that our only way out of that is for that person to change their behavior.

[00:00:48] Paul: And so we focus all of our efforts onto that one person and their problematic behavior. And if you want to know why that is a generally unsuccessful strategy, go back and listen to part one, episode 179! 

[00:01:01] Paul: But what we talked about in that episode is, a more useful strategy that we generally employ. Which is more about identifying, 'Okay, if this behavior is occurring, what effect is it having? What impact is it having? And how can we reduce that impact?' 

[00:01:17] Paul: One of the ways that we tend to reduce that impact is by recognizing these are the patterns that that creates in other people and in the group. So if we can disrupt those patterns in some way, we can lessen the impact without the other person ever changing their behavior.

[00:01:31] Paul: And so we break that linkage between, 'Well, this person does this thing. It has this result.' Well, only if everybody else does what they're doing right now. And so we can actually focus our efforts on everybody else. What can we do so that when this behavior happens, it doesn't have the outcome that we want.

[00:01:49] Paul: And that is way easier said than done. And that's what we want to get into here today. That sort of sticky, hard, emotional work often of 'When I find myself in the moment, and this person who I keep wanting to think is the problem, does this thing that I'm super irritated or frustrated, or angry about, again. How do I start to shift that pattern? How do I start to actually do that work to get us a different result?' 

[00:02:17] Karen: And we talked some in the last episode about how useful it can be to have that conversation with others that may be having a similar experience. And this isn't ganging up on that difficult person.

[00:02:29] Karen: This is strategizing for how to make the group successful. I mean, we want to be clear about that. I mean, often we just know we're annoyed, and we even attach judgment and, you know, 'We hate it because they're so aggressive' or 'We hate it because they're so loud' or we hate it because, well, what is the actual behavior?

[00:02:44] Karen: What is the thing that actually happens and what is the impact that it has and how do we want to shift that? So if we can have some strategies, it's hugely helpful to have some plans in place the next time it happens. 

[00:02:58] Karen: And sometimes it's even a two person plan. You know, 'Okay, Paul, next time that person interrupts me, I need you to be the one who says, 'Hey, Karen, I, I, I, wait, I just really wanted to hear the rest of what Karen had to say.'

[00:03:09] Karen: Or when he interrupts Paul, I'm going to say that for him. That kind of thing. Like, you can have strategies that are, again, not to attack or put down the person, but to disrupt the behavior pattern and the impact that that whole big pattern. 

[00:03:22] Karen: So strategizing ahead can be hugely useful. And it's very specific to that particular situation. We aren't going to be able to tell you what to do in every situation, but just that approach of how do we disrupt the impact. 

[00:03:35] Paul: And what I want to point to there is, what we talked about in the last episode that we said, don't do, which is when Karen and I are strategizing about how can we shift our behaviors in response to what happens in the group setting, the focus is on what are we going to do differently?

[00:03:52] Paul: The focus is on our own actions. It's not 'How do we push this person out of the group?' 'How do we make sure they don't get invited to the meeting', right? It's actually not about them. It's about us. It's about how do we show up differently. 

[00:04:06] Paul: And I think that's one of the things that can be really useful in terms of helping the other person not feel attacked. Not get on the defensive, which is one of the big things that we talked about last episode about, like, 'If you want to guarantee that their behavior is going to stay the same, get them to feel defensive.' 

[00:04:21] Paul: So it's focusing about 'What are we doing?' And this can be hard because what it is, is recognizing what's the part of the pattern that belongs to us. Where have we been complicit in generating the outcome that we don't want? 

[00:04:39] Paul: And as we usually say on the show, we got to do our own work around that. But it's like recognizing, 'Yeah, if there's someone who's always interrupting what Karen is saying, I got to recognize I'm complicit in that. I'm not saying anything about that. I'm just sitting back and going, Glad that's not me,' right? That's my piece. 

[00:04:56] Paul: And so if I talk to Karen and I go, 'Hey, this seems like... and as a result, this thing never happens.' Then I can start to go, 'Oh, okay, yeah, it would be useful for me to say, actually, I'd like to hear the rest of what Karen had to say.' that's about shifting my behavior, not about changing what the other person is doing. 

[00:05:14] Karen: Yeah. And I think that, having just said that it's useful if we can strategize in advance. I also want to say we can't always. And so there's also, I think, a conversation to be had about what do you do when you're faced with difficult behavior that you didn't anticipate or that you didn't have a plan for. And to be fair, it's not necessarily we haven't seen it before, but, you know, 'It looks different this time. The strategy that we had is not going to apply', or 'Maybe we just didn't plan for it, even if there's an element of 'It's happening again.' 

[00:05:44] Karen: But what can we do in that moment? To be productive in our response, to have an effective response that's actually going to help the group.

[00:05:55] Karen: And I want to say the first thing is the frame, which we've just talked about. The frame is, how do I lessen the impact? The frame is not 'how do I protect myself from that person', necessarily. The frame is not, how do I put them down and dismiss them and disempower them and decrease their impact. All of that stuff is very much focused on them.

[00:06:18] Karen: And it will be received as negative by them and likely will result in them doubling down on the behavior I didn't like to start with. 

[00:06:25] Karen: So, the first thing is to keep very clear what your goal is. And if your goal is to change that person's behavior, good luck with that. But if your goal is to change the experience that you and others are having in the group, to just be very clear about that. That I'm looking for, 'Where can I change the impact?' I'm looking for 'What can I do differently?' 

[00:06:47] Karen: And specifically, not 'What can I do differently to punish them or make them feel bad?' This is 'What can I do differently so that the group environment will be safer, more productive, more effective in the thing that we're trying to accomplish.' 

[00:07:02] Paul: There is also a piece there. This is kind of a pre work thing, but also a thing you can do in the moment. Like part of that is just, we talked about identifying what's the behavior that they're doing. But recognizing like, 'What does that stir up in me?' Like, what's the emotional response that I have to that, that throws me off balance?

[00:07:19] Paul: Because that's probably what's keeping my current behavior in play, right. It's like, 'Oh, I get upset about this.' And then I go, 'Well, I don't want to yell at them. So I'm just not going to say anything.' It's like, 'Oh, if I could be less upset. Then I might have a richer array of things that I might be able to do.' So what is it about this that upsets me? 

[00:07:40] Paul: Like if I can start to kind of recognize what it is that really gets my goat, and work with that and step back from that. And be able to go, 'Ah, okay, so I don't know when this is going to come up. But I know when it does, I can be a little less reactive about it.'

[00:07:58] Paul: And the part that you can do in the moment, even if you haven't had the planning on it, is to be able to notice, like when a thing happens that I have this strong- like, this is where I say feelings are data? The fact that I have a strong emotional response to this thing is like the warning light in my car, right? Check engine. It's like, 'Okay, something's going on here.' 

[00:08:17] Paul: One of the things that I've had some success with in these situations is when this happens, is asking for a pause. And just being like, 'So, you know, I'm noticing I'm a little stirred up. There's a couple of things that stirred up in me', or 'I'm a little shaken by this', or like, 'I'm noticing I'm a little on edge around this. Can we take just a minute? Just want to take a few breaths' or I want to do whatever. 

[00:08:36] Paul: Just pause and think about how I want to respond to this. It's a super vulnerable move to do in a group. And if that's not part of your group culture, that can feel very, very dangerous. But what you're doing is you're creating space between the behavior, your emotional response to it, and then your actual reaction to it.

[00:09:00] Paul: Like, what are you doing? How are you working through that? And just by creating a little bit more space, you can free yourself up for doing something different. 

[00:09:08] Karen: Yeah, and I feel like what you're pointing to here is the difference between emotional intelligence, which is that check engine light, right? The emotional intelligence that says something is not okay here. And the cognitive intelligence, which is what will solve our problem. Because the emotional intelligence is going to feed reactivity.

[00:09:25] Karen: I mean, it's a great warning cue. It's hugely valuable. You don't want to squinch it. But it's only good for what it's good for. And what it's good for is mostly warning light territory. It's mostly information that says 'We're not okay. Something's going on here that shouldn't be going on and we need to pay attention to it.'

[00:09:43] Karen: But what it also does is it's very good for instant reactivity. That doesn't involve a great deal of thought, or to use the term I was using, cognitive intelligence. And what this piece that we're saying about, look at the impact, and try to change the impact, is pretty complex cognitive territory. We need our cognitive self engaged with the emotional self.

[00:10:05] Karen: And that doesn't happen instantly. Which is why 'Just take a pause' and asking for a pause is great. I want to say also just take a deep breath. Do something that settles your body in to the place where your cognitive brain and your emotional brain can talk to each other. Because that doesn't happen in the moment of the first emotional cue.

[00:10:29] Paul: And it's kind of bringing this full circle because we've said very often we get asked this question, you know, we get brought in and there's a group that has 'the difficult person' who doesn't necessarily have a lot of the, as we've said, the emotional intelligence, the ability to sort of interact with other things.

[00:10:45] Paul: Well, what's actually happening is they're doing things that are causing the members of the group, that maybe have a little bit more skilled in that space, to become de skilled. We're getting triggered by that and then we're just responding in our deep ingrained patterns rather than making conscious choices about it.

[00:11:03] Paul: So that's the sort of larger thing that's going on. We get annoyed, we get frustrated, we get scared, we get emotionally reactive to this thing. So it's not like we're actually at our best either. 

[00:11:12] Paul: But we have access to those things. If we can create some of that space. one of my most smart moments interacting with somebody once, was again, someone who was a difficult person who was pushing all my buttons. And the middle of this conversation, I just somehow had the wherewithal to say, 'You know, You deserve a better version of me than you're getting right now. I can't show up in the way that I would like to in this conversation. Can we take a break? Can I come back?' 

[00:11:41] Paul: And it was me creating that space. And the other person just kind of- like, they gave me this look like, 'I don't know what just happened, but it sounds like a good idea.' right? And when we re-engaged, I was in a much more skilled place, I was less reactive.

[00:11:55] Paul: They may or may not have been. But as a result, we were able to shift the pattern. We're able to do those things. What we talked about has been that, well, this person doesn't have this skill and in these moments, we don't either. So how do we give ourselves access to the skill that we do possess by creating a little bit more of that gap?

[00:12:15] Karen: Yeah, so, I want to point out here that sometimes we can do what you're talking about where we actually, you know, we get a 5 minute or a 2 hour or a 1 day break or whatever. Sometimes this is as small as, like, literally 2 deep breaths. Like, it can be seconds. But that 'just pause and give myself a little bit of space in here' can make a huge difference.

[00:12:38] Karen: And then with that space, the next thing I'm going to say, which comes up almost every episode, is get curious. What is going on here? What is the impact? Like, have those questions that I can ask myself in my own head. What's the impact that I'm concerned about? Because I don't know about you, but my go-to when I'm frustrated or angry is my own sort of internal rant of 'These are all the reasons that that behavior is not okay and that I know better and that I'm right.'

[00:13:07] Karen: None of this is going to help me. So if I can shift that script in my head away from anything with that judgment piece, get rid of all of that, and just go into the curious. What is actually going on here? That's going to give me my best option to engage in a productive way. 

[00:13:27] Paul: And what that kind of points back to, is this idea again of we're not actually trying to push this person out of the group.

[00:13:33] Paul: We're actually trying to approach them. Like, recognizing that this behavior that they've been engaging in pushes us away in some way, and kind of breaks that connection. That curiosity is a way of re-approaching. And just being able to say, like, 'I actually want to involve this other person in this.' 

[00:13:48] Paul: I need to get curious about what's going on with them. Pushing them away isn't going to actually help. How do I re engage in that emotional space? When I have better access to my skills, to my awareness, to my cognitive brain as well. And I'm not just in that emotionally reactive space. 

[00:14:03] Karen: And I'm imagining that our listeners at this point are going, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's all great theory. But what do I do?' 'Okay. I've taken a breath and I've gotten curious. Now, what do I do?' 

[00:14:14] Karen: And so I think it's probably useful for Paul, you and I, just sort of give some examples of things that are useful. And I want to start with, as you just said, engaging that person with the curiosity that we've got going.

[00:14:32] Karen: And also with respect, which is the last thing they expect, by the way. When people behave badly, you're not the only ones. This is not their first rodeo. They are used to behaving this way and then having to defend themselves. 

[00:14:45] Karen: And so if we can come with curiosity and respect, and even an alignment with values. Typically people have a value for relationships. They have a value for working well together. And you can engage that by saying something like, 'You know, are you open to hearing other viewpoints on that? Would you be willing to let that person that you just interrupted- I wouldn't say the 'you just interrupted' part, but would you be willing to let that person finish what they had to say before you share your thought?'

[00:15:13] Karen: What you're saying sounds like a lot, but I'm curious, what's the objective that you're after?' And again, which of these you do depends a lot on what's actually going on. But that piece about asking their permission to do the thing that I am clear is the only right thing to do.

[00:15:30] Karen: But when I asked their permission, it's an expression of respect. And it gives them some control, which probably gives them more ability. Like, it will help them access whatever emotional intelligence they have. When they feel out of control, when they feel managed, when they feel shut down, their emotional intelligence, their current emotional intelligence app is two drops.

[00:15:53] Karen: And so if we can give them that respect and that bit of control, and it's a very small bit, I want to say, but that 'Would you be willing to' piece can be incredibly powerful. 

[00:16:05] Paul: Yeah. The questions that you need to ask at that point need to come from a place of genuine curiosity. Where you don't know the answer.

[00:16:12] Paul: So things like, go back to something that you said, ' It's not clear to me what's important about this to you. Could you help me understand that?' Which is somewhat of a coded way of saying, 'I have no idea what you're talking about', but it's actually inquiring about what's important to you. What matters to you here? 

[00:16:27] Paul: Because that's now an expression that I care about what matters to them. Which again, any sort of thing that allows you to express respect for them, to express a sense of mutual purpose. Where it's like, 'Actually, we're in this together. I want you to succeed too.'

[00:16:42] Paul: Those are useful things to say and to ask about, that really affirm, 'Yeah, you're part of this. Even if this thing that you're doing annoys the heck out of me.' 

[00:16:53] Karen: And I really like that what's important to you about this question, not only for the things you just said, but also because it asks them to do some cognitive processing.

[00:17:02] Karen: So whatever sort of emotional overtake is happening in their brain, it actually may help them regulate if they have to stop and do a little emotional processing. It's likely to even slow them down. And so it's giving them a cue that helps them make better choices. 

[00:17:20] Paul: So if we kind of unpack where we've been over the course of these last two episodes, we've talked about the situation where we've got an individual in the group who's the identified problem.

[00:17:29] Paul: If only they would stop being so difficult, if only they would stop doing this thing. And we've said largely give up on that notion. Because probably the reason why they're doing it is they don't have the skill to do anything else. So it is what it is, at least in the short term. 

[00:17:44] Paul: So how do we instead look at what are ways that we can, in the rest of the group lessen the impact that behavior has? And how can we do that by disrupting the patterns that lead to the impact? That's kind of what we talked about in part one. 

[00:17:58] Paul: Today, what we've really been talking about disrupting a different type of pattern, which is that pattern of emotional hijack. Of when we're in the moment and the person does this thing, we lose access to our emotional skills and our ability to work together.

[00:18:12] Paul: So how can we calm ourselves down so that we can get back access to that. So that we can show up as the more skillful versions of ourselves. And how can we engage with the other person to help them show up as a more skillful version of themselves? 

[00:18:26] Paul: So things like asking questions that re engage their cognitive processing and not just their emotional reactivity.

[00:18:33] Paul: Creating space for ourselves, taking a breath, two deep breaths. Taking a brief pause so that we're less emotionally reactive and more in that cognitive space. So that ultimately, like this person's behavior may never really change, right? They may continue to do this, over and over and over again, but we'll have less of an emotional response to it.

[00:18:53] Paul: And fundamentally it'll become less disruptive to whatever problem the group is trying to solve, and whatever it is that we're trying to get done together. 

[00:19:01] Paul: So none of this is simple. None of this is easy. There's a lot of things that are going on at the same time. But if you keep those things in mind, you have a much better chance of working successfully together, even when somebody is being difficult.

[00:19:17] Karen: And that's going to do it for us today. Until next time I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:19:20] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis. And this has been Employing Differences.