From the course: Working with Difficult People

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Are you the difficult person?

Are you the difficult person?

It's so easy to point fingers, isn't it? But if there's one thing I've learned from working with people on their relationships, it's that we tend to wildly underestimate the role that we play in our frustrations with other people. When working with a difficult coworker, our instinct is often to blame them or to see them as the whole problem. But the truth is, every relationship dynamic between two people is co-created by both people. While it's much easier to see and critique frustrating behaviors in others than it is to acknowledge them in ourselves, the first step is always to turn the mirror inward and explore what you can discover, own, and change in yourself to improve things. So how do you do this? First, ask yourself, what can your frustrations with this other person teach you about yourself? One thing to consider is that we tend to judge people more harshly if their behavior reminds us of behavior that we exhibit but wish we didn't. For example, I have a friend who was…

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