All too often, when people tell me about their workplace troubles, frequently those problems are exacerbated by someone referred to as “difficult.” There’s a philosophy I share when I hear this and it goes like this:
- People are not difficult, they’re different.
- The thing that makes working with these people difficult is that we’ve not yet learned to communicate in ways that work for them.
You’re probably thinking, “But you don’t know my coworker!” Yes, people are complex creatures, and you are correct. I don’t know your coworker. But I do know ways to adapt so that interactions are less “difficult.”
Every person has unique cognitive preferences, which involves what we notice, how we process information and how we make decisions. We also have behavioral tendencies, which involves a blend of how we approach problems, how we influence others, how we follow rules and how we prefer the pace of our day to go.
When we pair up nearly 20,000 possible cognitive styles and 20,000 possible behavioral styles we get hundreds of thousands of personality possibilities. But wait, there’s more. Everyone also has a different blend of motivations, some of which are innate and some of which are learned. Add those to our multi-dimensional model and we get more than 130 trillion possible personality combinations.
Each person has a unique fingerprint, so it makes sense that we also have unique personalities. Thankfully, even if we only understand the basic categories, we can make great strides when working with different styles.
How do we do this?
The first key to success in dealing with “difficult” people is realizing that we have choice in how we deal with them. We can criticize differences, or we can choose to see the value in them. One of the best ways to make headway in this is to become a student of styles. Why? Because to work effectively with so-called difficult people, we need to be able to adapt.
Think about it. If we maintain our own unique style and don’t adapt, and someone else maintains a different style and also doesn’t adapt, then we have two people who see each other as difficult. However, if even one person reaches out and adapts, then forward progress becomes much easier.
If you’re like me, you failed telepathy in high school, and that means we need to become students of the different styles so we can better understand the different ways people can be. The better we get at understanding and adapting to the different styles, the fewer “difficult” people we’ll encounter.
Cognitive Styles
I mentioned earlier that people notice different things, process information differently and also make decisions in different ways. Cognitive assessments identify our tendencies in these areas, including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Keirsey Temperaments Sorter. If you’re on a tight budget, a free online resource to learn about these areas is the 16 Personalities assessment. In addition to the areas mentioned above, you will also learn about the different ways people get and spend energy.
The key to success when studying any of these is to remember that no good or bad exists for any plot point on any graph. Every preference has strengths and every preference has blind spots. The best way to approach these differences is to choose to value the differences instead of criticizing them.
Behavioral Differences
As mentioned, each person also has a preference for approaching problems, influencing others, following rules and maintaining workday pace. The DISC language best describes the different ways these preferences manifest. Of all the personality arenas, the DISC behavioral styles are the easiest to learn because they are observable.
DISC is an acronym for the preferences measured in DISC assessments.
- D – Dominant in the face of problems and challenges
- I – Influencing people and contacts
- S – Steady in pace and consistency
- C – Conscientious in policies and constraints
People have preferences toward or away from those descriptors. When we learn the DISC language it becomes easier to recognize the different styles and because each style has a different communication preference, when we recognize them, it’s easier to adapt.
Motivational Styles
Perhaps the most complex facet of personality is motivations. That’s because we all have innate (or natural motivations) and also learned (or imprinted motivations).
Natural motivations are on par with what are known as Multiple Intelligences, a theory proposed 40 years ago by Harvard professor Howard Gardner. His work transformed the fields of psychology and education, plus dare I say, workplace teams, if we realize the value of what Gardner discovered.
Gardner identified nine different areas of intelligence:
- Verbal-linguistic
- Mathematical-logical
- Musical
- Visual-spatial
- Bodily-kinesthetic
- Interpersonal
- Intrapersonal
- Naturalist
- Existential
Why do I count these different types of intelligence as motivators? My perspective is people are naturally motivated to do and learn more in areas where they have natural intellect. For example, if a person scores strong in Naturalist Intelligence, that person will be innately motivated to do and learn more in things having to do with nature.
Learned motivators are formed in our early childhood through events that create an emotional imprint. Six basic continuum exist in this arena, and imprints in these areas drive our behavior.
- Theoretical – Driven by the discovery of truth and knowledge
- Utilitarian – Driven by practicality, usefulness and ROI
- Aesthetic – Driven by form and harmony
- Social – Driven by a desire to help others
- Individualistic – Driven by personal power and influence
- Traditional – Driven by a sense of order and structure
As mentioned, the motivational spectrums become complex, but they’re super valuable to know because if we know what we’re looking for, we can minimize the uncommonly high level of “difficulty” that can exist between people with differing motivators.
Bottom line, to deal better with so-called difficult people, the best staring point is to become a student of what makes each of us tick. •
Daniel Bobinski, who has a doctorate in theology, is a best-selling author and a popular speaker at conferences and retreats. For more than 30 years he’s been working with teams and individuals (1:1 coaching) to help them achieve excellence. He was also teaching Emotional Intelligence since before it was a thing. Reach him by email at DanielBobinski@protonmail.com or 208-375-7606.
