Let’s face it, people can be a challenge. There are 8 billion of us on the planet, each one of us with our own unique experience, our own opinions and ideas, our own agendas and our own ways of doing things. Yes, you’re the lead character in the movie of your life, but to all the other people around you, you’re at most the co-lead, more likely a guest-star, a walk-on, maybe even just a background player. And guess what? You don’t get to direct their movies. As much as you might want to scream and yell, “You’re doing the scene all wrong and it’s taking the story in a terrible direction!”, it’s not your story to tell. What you can do is be clear on an ending that works for you, then do your best to influence and educate the other person to bring the scene home on time and on budget. But if the other person is a real diva behind the scenes and insists on driving the scene into the ground, you might need to decide you’re no longer going to participate in this particular production.
The key to dealing with challenging people is to shift the focus from “fixing” them to achieving the result you’re looking for. Here’s a simple example of what I’m talking about: Picture a young couple, new parents with a two-year-old toddler, out for a day at the beach. At this point, two years old, the child is more like a feral cat than a rational human you can reason with. He’s just getting confident on his feet, the world is his oyster. If you’ve ever been around a toddler who’s really gotten the hang of walking, you know they would probably walk across the continent if you let them loose. And why not? Imagine being confined to the world of crawling on all fours, and suddenly figuring out you can get up off the floor! You can walk and run and jump! You’d run around like a lunatic too.
So here’s our young family, set up for a fun day at the beach. They try to build a sand castle, they try to have a picnic lunch, they try to play in the shallow surf, but what they really end up doing is chasing the little one, who insists on breaking free every chance he gets and tearing across the beach like an escaped prisoner. Running over their neighbors’ towels, kicking up sand, generally terrorizing the other people who’d come out looking for a relaxing day at the beach. Dad’s getting frustrated and more than a little embarrassed. He can feel the eyes on them, can imagine the voices saying, Someone’s gotta get this kid under control. But nothing he’s tried seems to work. Then mom has an idea.
She thinks about the saying, The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Which is exactly what they’ve been doing. Chase the boy down, tell him he’s not allowed to run away, bring him back, put him down, watch as he beats feet in the opposite direction, laughing hysterically. Insanity. She realizes the kid’s not being difficult just to be difficult; he’s having a blast! He thinks it’s fun when they chase him down and bring him back. He’s doing his thing. Instead, mom turns her focus toward the result they’ve been trying but failing to create. Obviously, they want the kid to run around and have fun, but they’d like him to stay within arms reach and out of other people’s space.
So, using one of those little plastic shovels, she makes a big circle in the sand all the way around their base camp. “We’re going to play a game,” she says to the boy. “See the circle? That’s a force field and we’re going to stay inside the force field, okay?” At first the boy is intrigued, it’s a new game. But it’s not long before something outside the force field catches his eye, he starts to make a run for it, but when he reaches the line in the sand, he hears a booming, “NO!” Not any ordinary NO, it’s the “Mom Voice” NO, and it stops the boy in his tracks. But it’s the next step that’s most important. Mom doesn’t scold the boy for trying to leave the circle, instead she comes at him with high fives and hugs and, “You stayed inside the force field! Good job!” From there, the kid was allowed to let his freak flag fly, as long as he stayed inside the force field.
Of course, not everyone you deal with in life is going to be as pliable as a two-year-old. Some people are going to tell you to take your force field and shove it up your ass. That’s okay, it just means doing some recalibrating and trying a different strategy. And there are going to be some people who just won’t budge, no matter what you do. You might have a client, a coworker, a customer who, for whatever reasons, are just unable to see what’s right in front of them. You can utilize every tool, technique, and strategy there is to educate and influence, but you can’t make the decisions for them. There comes a point where you can say, Look, this isn’t getting either of us where we want to be. So, you go do your thing, and when you’re ready to get to work, I’ll be here. You don’t need to close the door on anyone.
Let’s say you’re a small business owner, building your company, and every client counts. Recently, one of those clients has been proving troublesome. Every transaction is contentious and unproductive. You’ve taken every approach toward reaching the desired outcome, Have A Productive Working Relationship, but nothing seems to do the trick. Now you’re worried the whole relationship could fall apart. This is where you need to look at your greater desired outcome, Build A Thriving Business. What’s going to get you there? Is the anxiety and the worrying and the bickering going to get you there? As long as your focus is on Afraid To Lose A Client, you’re not focused on Build A Thriving Business. Cutting ties with the client might pinch the pocketbook in the short term, but it also opens new windows of opportunity.
When it comes to challenging family members, things get a little more complicated, right? I mean, you can’t just void your contract with Uncle Larry. You could choose to make things messy, declare to the family that Uncle Larry is dead to you, refuse to be in the same room with him. And what a wonderful experience that creates for everyone else at Thanksgiving. The more productive route is to set a reasonable outcome for those times when you know he will be in attendance. That begins with you deciding that Uncle Larry is Uncle Larry. He’s been around your entire life, do you think when you walk into Nonnie Ruth’s birthday party there’s going to be some new person standing in Uncle Larry’s loafers? Nope. Same guy he always is. But you can decide how you’re going to hold yourself and focus on creating a memorable birthday for your Nonnie rather than trying to manage your mother’s lunatic brother.
Working with, living with, existing with other people isn’t always an amusement park ride. Some people can be challenging, some can be confusing, some can be infuriating. And it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of trying to manage other people, trying to “fix” them, trying to direct their movie. The truth is, the most you can hope for is to educate and influence the people in your life, but at the end of the day, you have no control over how other people are going to feel, think or behave. What you can do is manage the outcome you’re looking for in your experience with the other person, and the outcome you're looking to create in your overall Vision. That means setting reasonable expectations, being able to adapt and adjust your own behavior, and knowing when it’s time to just get out of the way. Manage the outcome, not the person.
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