STOP TRYING TO IMPOSE YOUR WILL ON TOUGH COMMUNICATORS
Richard “Tuff” Hedeman earned his nickname. He was a three-time world champion bull rider and one of the few people ever to successfully ride the powerful and notorious bull named Bodacious.1
Bodacious possessed an uncommon combination of power and unpredictability, and had a nasty habit of contorting in ways that other bulls wouldn’t or couldn’t. And as Tuff Hedeman learned, Bodacious had a few other tricks up his hoof to shake off cowboys who didn’t have the sense to let go after the first few seconds.
Hedeman first successfully rode Bodacious in 1993, staying on for the required eight seconds—an eternity on the back of Bodacious. Two years later, Hedeman drew Bodacious again at the professional bull-riding finals in Las Vegas. Shortly after leaving the chute, the bull lurched dramatically, whipping Hedeman backward and forward like a rag doll. Then Bodacious jerked backward at full speed, violently head-butting Hedeman and breaking his cheekbones into 11 pieces.2
In a television interview, Hedeman described the surgery and its aftermath with characteristic understatement: “It took about six and a half hours of reconstructive surgery and six titanium plates, and I can’t smell or taste anything, but I guess that comes in handy when there aren’t any good restaurants around.”3
Two months after the accident, with his face reconstructed, Tuff Hedeman drew Bodacious for the third time at the national rodeo finals. There was anticipation and some tension in the arena because Hedeman never backed down from a challenge—something that made him a fan favorite. But as the chute opened, before the bucking even began, Hedeman jumped off Bodacious and forfeited his turn.4 He quit before Bodacious started.
As Hedeman tipped his hat to the bull, the crowd responded to his decision with an ovation. Not long after, Bodacious—although still in his prime—was retired. The bull was simply too dangerous for anyone to ride.
Communicating with some people is a lot like climbing on the back of Bodacious—the situation is impossible to control, and no matter how hard you try, you still may end up in the dirt.
People are difficult in a number of ways. Jane talks too much. Jim is incredibly stubborn. Uncle Billy loves to argue. Your client is moody. The table on the next page provides a menu of different types.
Whether they’re controlling, critical, or just cranky, the behaviors that make someone a difficult person present formidable barriers to productive and meaningful communication. Difficult people make we-based interpersonal communication extremely elusive, and sometimes downright impossible.
Difficult people also share a talent for provoking frustration, which activates the Neanderthal instincts inside us. When a particularly difficult colleague opens his mouth, part of your brain starts urging you to be assertive: C’mon, Geoff, don’t just stand there and let Jim get the best of you. Get in there and show him that he can’t treat you like that.
So we leap into confrontations with the very people we are least likely to influence. We wrestle with Jane to get a word in edgewise. We struggle to change Jim’s mind. We fire a barrage of points and counterpoints into Uncle Billy’s arguments. We try to offset our client’s mood swings.
Alas, like many of the Neanderthal’s prescriptions, treating difficult people like a challenge to overcome or a difficult conversation as a game to win doesn’t work in the modern world. The Neanderthal approach makes a serious error when it encourages you to personalize a difficult person’s behavior (Look at how he’s treating me; he can’t do that to me), because with difficult people it’s not personal at all. Uncle Billy argues with everybody. Your client in Wichita Falls is moody with everyone. Jane will talk anyone’s ear off. Jim is stubborn with everyone.
It’s not you; it’s them. You won’t see that sentence anywhere else in this book, because we are at least partially responsible for virtually all of our communication problems. But difficult people are the exception.
The good news is that there aren’t many truly difficult people in the world (even though they seem to be surrounding you on some days). Take a good, clear look at the people who push your buttons. If they’re only difficult with you, that’s a relationship problem, not a difficult-person problem. And if a person is only difficult occasionally, that’s just a regular person having a bad day. When someone is only difficult with you (a relationship problem), figure out how you are contributing to the problem—which you almost certainly are—and adjust your own behavior first. If that doesn’t improve the relationship, initiate a conversation to find out what will.
Although most people aren’t chronically difficult, even one difficult person in a key role—a boss, a key client, or a close family member—can cause major frustration. But Neanderthal-induced strategies don’t work well with difficult people. To communicate more effectively with such types, we need to take a page from Tuff Hedeman’s Bodacious playbook.
We need to quit.
Difficult people don’t change. At the end of a conversation, the difficult person remains the same, but often we are in a weaker position. Difficult communication is frustrating—and occasionally exhausting—communication. Frustration acts like a multiplier, amplifying our responses, increasing the escalation, and magnifying the relational damage. Whatever happens, we lose. The situation is rigged against us.
Quitting is not as outrageous as it sounds. You’ve probably already configured your life to reduce your exposure to as many difficult people as you can: coworkers you can avoid, old friends you can ignore, and clients you can do without. So keep up the good work.
The difficult people who will remain in your life are those you either have to or want to communicate with, like bosses, important clients, essential colleagues, and close family members. These people stay in your network, but this short list is manageable because, again, most people are not chronically difficult—and because you’re going to quit trying to force your will on those who are.
Only a commitment to let go of our desire to “win” by imposing our will on the other person can realistically and consistently improve our communication with difficult communicators. Difficult people won’t be controlled. It’s time to quit.
Few players in NBA history were more difficult to handle than Dennis “the Menace” Rodman. Covered with tattoos and piercings and prone to kaleidoscopic hair dyeing, Rodman was difficult on and off the court. He was also one of the league’s leading rebounders, making him an on-court asset despite his eccentric behavior. Many people—coaches, teammates, and NBA executives—admired Rodman’s talents, but few people knew how to channel his skills.5
In his autobiography Bad as I Wanna Be, Rodman recalls how he quickly came to appreciate then–Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson:
When I looked over there during that first exhibition game and saw him laughing as the ref was slapping a T [technical foul] on me … I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t expecting that. I wasn’t ready for that. Somebody understands? A coach who understands? One thought came to my mind: Finally.6 [Emphasis in original]
Jackson—a 6′ 8″ former basketball player and a record-setting coach of professional basketball championship teams—had a nickname of his own, “Zen Master,” for his legendary coaching style that incorporated Eastern, Western, Native American, and New Age spiritual practices with a serene sideline persona.7
Jackson was famous for not trying to overtly impose his will on players and for believing that his leadership was working when he was “invisible” and things were happening in the moment.8 His ability to relinquish control and find ways to work with difficult players enabled him to deal with larger-than-life personalities like Rodman, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kobe Bryant—men who could twist other coaches into knots.
You might say that the most successful coach in professional basketball history was a quitter of sorts, just as you and I should be with difficult communicators.
You can’t avoid difficult people all the time. Five suggestions will help you quit intelligently when you need to interact with the difficult—but important—people in your life:
1. Let go. Let difficult people be difficult. How people act is just a tactic, while what you want to achieve is a strategy. Let them have their tactics. Stay focused on your strategy.
2. Aim low. Scale back your conversational goals and accept the likelihood of failure that accompanies conversations with difficult people. Don’t expect we-based interpersonal communication to emerge easily, if at all, in the conversation. Have modest expectations when you are dealing with difficult communicators.
3. Avoid tangents. Goal, goal, goal—stay focused on your (modest) conversational goal. Difficult people make frustrating conversational partners, and where frustration lurks, relational danger is never far away. Don’t open or support extra lines of conversation when dealing with a difficult person; diversions will just increase the amount of time that you’re exposed to a challenging interaction and will dilute your focus.
4. Go private. Have conversations with difficult people one-on-one whenever possible. Adding others to a difficult conversation only increases the uncertainty, adds complexity, opens the door for the difficult person to display more unhelpful behaviors (like showing off for another person), and raises the risk that the difficult person’s behavior will contaminate the group.
5. Get out. Exit a conversation with a difficult person as soon as your goal has been fully or partially attained or when the conversation reaches a stalemate. If a difficult person initiates a conversation, be alert to contain the conversation and make an exit if the discussion becomes problematic.
There are four common types of difficult people—argumentative, stubborn, controlling, and quiet—who merit additional discussion.9 Combine these suggestions with the five ideas we discussed earlier—let go, aim low, avoid tangents, go private, and get out—to improve your interactions with these difficult people.
Some conversationalists put the devil in devil’s advocate. They argue for any reason, they are relentless in pounding home their points, and they aren’t above changing their position on the fly just to keep the argument going. Let these serial arguers have their say, because any attempts to squelch their arguments are likely to backfire. People like this will probably even argue with you about why you’re trying to silence them.
It’s helpful to track the serial arguer’s habits and determine if he might be less combative at certain times of the day or through certain communication modes, like on the phone or face-to-face. If your argumentative boss is more agreeable right after lunch when he’s not hungry, or by e-mail where he feels less pressure to respond immediately, schedule your strategic conversations accordingly.
Stubborn people cause more frustrations than any other type of difficult person, because no matter what you do, they just don’t budge much from their positions. Assign your lowest conversational expectations to these people. Set very modest goals for a conversation, like getting a stubborn person just to listen to you or securing the scantest of agreements. You might be able to build on small successes over time.
In order to moderate a stubborn person’s reflexive and negative responses, it’s sometimes helpful to ask for permission to bring up an issue. Tell the stubborn person that you aren’t looking to change her mind, but you simply want to express yourself. Concisely state your position. If the other person listens, that’s progress. You can’t move stubborn people too far, too fast, if you can even move them at all.
Some people seize control of a conversation and don’t let anyone else meaningfully impact its topics or trajectory. People control conversations for one of three primary reasons. In the first case, one person—like a boss, teacher, or parent—has formal authority and wields it to steer the conversation. In the second case, time constraints or a sense of urgency is driving the controlling behavior. And in the third case, the controller is worried about what might happen, and where the discussion might lead, if he doesn’t direct the conversation.
When someone tries to control the conversation, your strategy should usually be simple: let the person do it. As long as your conversational goal (if you have one) isn’t getting completely stifled, it’s probably fine to let the other person lead the discussion.
But if the controlling behavior prevents you from reasonably addressing your conversational goal, you have a few options. You can tell the person that you have something to say. You can ask to switch topics. You can use questions and statements to insert your objective into the conversation (“Can I say something here?” “I have something to add to that.” “I’d like to make a comment”). And if the controlling behavior is causing serious—not just irritating—relational problems, you can prepare for a conversation to directly address the behavior.
While some difficult people talk too much, others don’t talk much at all; or if they do talk, they seldom share anything meaningful. If you have a key relationship with a quiet or reserved person and the lack of communication is causing problems, find a way to realistically increase her engagement in the conversations you need to have. Don’t be afraid to thoughtfully talk about the communication that you feel is missing from your relationship with a quiet person, but be realistic about the probable outcomes.
A quiet person is not likely to suddenly open up about every issue. Think carefully about what you really need and prepare one or two specific and modest requests (such as to your boss: “Could we talk once a month about how I’m doing?” or “Could we talk once a quarter about my key projects?” And to your significant other: “Could we talk about the day ahead before we go to sleep each night?” or “I’d like it if you would share your concerns with me more often”).
As we know all too well, difficult communicators make for frustrating interactions where we-based interpersonal communication is rare and our Neanderthal instincts are agitated. It never ends favorably when the Neanderthal climbs on top of Bodacious the bull.
Take a lesson from a cowboy named Tuff and a coach called the Zen Master instead. If you’re willing to quit imposing your will on difficult people, your interactions with them will be less prone to damaging escalation.
Next, I need to ask you to do something even harder.