Handling Difficult People and Situations

Overview

Course duration: 1 day.

This one-day course provides you with an extremely insightful and practical guide on how to manage yourself and the difficult people and situations that you encounter in your workplace. It will provide you with tips and techniques to enable you to develop the confidence to be proactive and not reactive when challenged by people and circumstances.

You will learn how to understand other people’s behaviour and how to respond appropriately. You will gain practical guidance to apply to your own situations and you will leave the course with a set of handy reference cards to remind you of key skills and techniques learned during the course in your day-to-day activities.

Is it right for me?

If you are looking to develop a more confident approach when dealing with difficult situations, this course will give you the tools and techniques you need.

What will I learn?

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Understand the theory behind workplace behaviour.
• Forge positive working relationships with difficult or uncooperative individuals.
• Approach conflict situations with increased confidence in an appropriate and timely manner.
• Adopt a confident, professional and appropriate style when faced with difficult people or situations.
• Plan your personal strategy for dealing with difficult situations.

Pre-course Activity

To gain the maximum benefit from the course, you will be sent a pre-course questionnaire to complete which asks you to consider current expectations. This will help you set the context of the course and the information you provide will be used on the day as part of the course activities.

What will it cover?

Developing an Understanding of Behaviour

• Understand why people behave the way they do
• Emotional impact of behaviours – yours and theirs
• Encouraging others to change non-productive work behaviour styles

Forging Positive Working Relationships

• Adopting a positive approach to your relationships with others
• Creating an open and honest working environment through constructive feedback

Managing Difficult People

• Recognise negative and aggressive behaviour patterns
• Understand and manage the situation rather than the person
• Identifying and dealing with the underlying causes of difficult behaviour

Adopting a Confident, Professional and Appropriate Style

• Managing feedback on the impact of personal communication
• Recommendations to build a confident and professional approach
• A toolkit to be combined and adapted to suit your individual situation

Planning Your Personal Strategy

• Develop a personal application plan

Trainer Profile

Phil McKew

I find the key to this event is building confidence, understanding why differences arise, seeing situations from several perspectives (including the fresh eyes of your fellow delegates) and working constructively to get them resolved.

Delegates bring a range of, often conflict based, issues from mediating in disputes between team members, differences of opinion over performance and feedback, and how to raise tough subjects or improve difficult working relationships.

You choose how much to open up on your issues on a one-to-one or small group basis but my experience is that people find it a relief to have others listen closely and share challenges that other people in the room may also be facing.

The Faculty

Along with Bev Holloway and Ian Sanders, Phil McKew is part of the dedicated faculty team who will deliver this course. The initials next to each date below indicate which trainer is scheduled to deliver which event.

Recent delegates have said:

“The whole day was well organised and ran smoothly and the facilitator was really enthusiastic and helpful.”