Q.What inspired you to write the book Dealing With People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst?
A. As holistic physicians, my co-author and I would counsel patients to find out the events happening in their lives. We came across the fact that relationship issues – whether personal or professional – were big issues, which if left unattended, could result in grave physical symptoms.
We started studying communication as a highly influential tool so that we might be able to get our patients change their habits and lifestyles. However, we discovered that if we taught them those communication skills and enabled them to handle the difficult people in their lives, then their physical symptoms would go away to a large extent. Thus, the journey began.
Q. How would you define a difficult personality type? How many such traits are there?
A. First, it is important to separate personality from behaviour. Personality is the sum total of every aspect of their being and not how they act. People act differently, according to context and relationship. Context is where they are and what is going on (in a business meeting or a social gathering or one-on-one in a restaurant).
Relationship is who they are with their boss, co-worker, customer, spouse, children or their mother-in-law. That is where the behaviour changes. It is important to separate behaviour from personality as the latter sticks with an individual. Human beings can only pay attention to give or take two things at one time. Therefore, if I think someone’s personality is negative then that is all I am going to notice and might miss the opportunity to influence the behaviour. So, we call them behavioural types.
People find it more effective if they think in terms of behaviour. We found that there are additionally 10 major behaviours that human beings found difficult. While studying personal relationships, we found eight of these came up in personal relationships. But, five of them already had corollaries in the 10. With another 3, there are altogether 13 behaviours.
Q. How can a person’s personality be molded to suit the organisation’s needs?
A. We have to remember where are we (the context) and what is going on in a relationship that influences behaviour. It is just like making a call successfully – you need the right digits in the right order. With behaviour, there is a goal and a step-by-step strategy that is going to get people out of that particular behaviour and in the moment. Now, whether you can in the long-term change someone’s behaviour will depend on how often you interact with the person or whether you have any kind of positional power over him or her. There are varying factors that can get people to change their behaviour. One way is through how you respond to them and the other could be their own self awareness.
Q. What is most difficult to change in a person?
A. I would not call it personality, but I think you can impact just about anyone’s behaviour. However, you always have to ask whether it is worth the time and energy it takes. In some cases, the answer might be no.
Q. What has changed in the third edition of the book?
A. There are two changes: We added the behaviour of judge meddler and martyr. We wrote a book Dealing with Relatives after Dealing With People You Can’t Stand… The book focused specifically on relative type relationship. So we thought it deserved to be in the book as it is common to the workplace as well. The second thing that changed was that we added more to whining and negativity. There was more to be said than we were teaching in the course.
Q. What is your personal strategy to bring out the best in people?
A. The strategy depends on the behaviour. The overall strategy is about three steps: You should know what you want out of the person and the interaction, pay attention to what is working and what is not, and be flexible. For instance, whining originates when people are task-focused but are little less assertive because they try to ensure that everything is right. If people around them do not focus on details, they go further into perfection.However, such people feel themselves as victims as they are unable to talk back to their colleagues or their bosses. So, the overall goal when people whine is to get them solve problems and help look out for solutions.
There are five steps to it:
(1) You listen to them. Once they start to repeat themselves, you interrupt them and say that you understand them by giving them a summary of interaction.
(2) Clarify and to ask questions, so that they can be specific. Whiners often generalise and think everything is wrong and no one really cares.
(3) You ask them for a solution/what they want. A lot of people this way come up with things that make a lot of sense.
(4) Get them involved in the solution. How you get them involved depends on your personal relationships.
(5) Give them something to look forward to. For example, tell them to do the work and offer them dinner or lunch, where you can sit and talk about what worked and what did not.
Q. How can HR deal with leaders with ‘toxic’ personality?
A. We have to keep in mind that when people are in danger zone, they go out to the extremes. This stress is the result of not getting what they want from people around them.
Our strategies do not focus on calling people wrong for how they act, but understanding what is missing in them. For example, if your boss becomes too aggressive, it could be because he or she feels that the situation is going out of control and people are taking too long to finish the work at hand or wasting time.
So then, you should know that you have to create a forward motion as quickly as possible and make things happen or give the impression that working is in progress by giving minute details of every schedule. This helps the aggressive behaviour calm down because you give them what they want by telling them that the things are in control.
Q. Do you think that keeping the people with same personality together helps in increasing productivity?
A. I do not think that having same behavioural types together will automatically work. If we put a bunch of people who have an attitude that we know everything does not mean that they are going to get along with each other. Workplace might become a battle ground for people with this kind of attitude. There will be a lot of ego issues. So, if they stay in the green zone or the cooperation zone, then they will probably do well together. It is because because everybody will be focused and will not waste time talking unproductive things. However, if they disagree about what needs to be done, then they could just as easily fall into problems.
