Maybe it’s a supplier who tries to bully you into always doing things his or her way. Or it could be a neighbour who complains no matter what you do, or an employee who brings essential skills, but is forever going his own way.
“Everyone has to deal with conflict,” says Paul Reisman, president of People Solutions Inc, a human resources consulting company in Montreal. “There are imperfect people all around us. It’s to be expected.”
Unfortunately, when people work in family businesses, as is so often the case in farming, it gets even more complex. “People bring the dysfunction from home into the business,” explains Reisman.
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If you want to have smoother relations with those around you, whether it’s on the farm, away from home or at a committee meeting, the first thing you should do is to look at your own behaviour.
“Maybe you’re a trigger,” says Reisman. “You should look at yourself and get some feedback from those you know and trust.” Dealing with difficult people means dealing with difficult behaviour, agrees Roberta Cava in her book Dealing with Difficult People. It’s important to recognize that your actions and behaviour can contribute to another person’s difficult behaviour.
It may not be that you’re doing anything offensive. In fact, very often it’s just that you’re expecting the other person to be hard to get along with, and it’s this apprehension that shows in your face and sets the other person off. “If you project discomfort then you’re liable to get undesirable behaviour,” says Reisman.
In such a case, at least, there’s an easy solution to try first.
Other cases can be much more difficult. However, they too can often be resolved by looking analytically at the situation.
Sometimes there are underlying problems that are making people difficult to deal with, says Kathie Must, director of workplace programs at Catholic Family Counselling Centre in Kitchener,
