Approach the relationship with curiosity!
We all have people in our lives that we find difficult to communicate with. It may be a salesperson that we don’t find particularly helpful or a nosy neighbor. In those cases the solutions could be simply to change the store where we shop and to limit our contact with the neighbor to a courteous greeting.
But what if the difficult person is an important player in our life? May be a relative, a coworker, or even worse, our boss?
Because we cannot remove these people from my life, I have spent time analyzing the reasons why we would label someone as “difficult” and how we could improve our communication with that person.
I found that in my case if I label someone as difficult is usually because they are different from me. They may talk slower than me, have a different thought process, or even have a different preference in terms of communication. I am highly visual and I have found that communicating with people that are highly auditive creates problems for me.
I also noticed that I would immediately label the person. Some labels were not very complimentary. I am not proud to recognize that I have used labels like slow, irritating, whining, negative, repetitive, shallow, narrow-minded, stubborn, forgetful, slacker, etc. You get the point.
Every time I had an encounter with that “difficult” person, the label would pop up. I would be irritated even before we started talking. I would be judging the person and expecting the conversation to go south. Thoughts like “Here she comes again”, “It’s going to take forever to make him understand”, “I bet you she didn’t do what she promised”, “Is he paying attention?”, and so on.
The problem was, that regardless of my thinking, I was forced to communicate with this person and make the relationship work. So the labels didn’t help. In fact, they made the communication more difficult.
I started a new practice. Instead of labeling, I approached the communication with curiosity. I used these questions:
- Why do they act like this?
- Do they find me as annoying as I find them?
- What can I do to make this happen in the fastest and most pleasant way?
I found that when I shifted my thinking to questions instead of judgments, the communication improved. I started accepting that:
- The other person was different
- The other person was not going to change
- It was my challenge to make the relationship work
- Making the relationship work would be proof of my leadership skills
I now switch to curiosity and questions whenever I have to deal with a “difficult” person. However, I don’t label them as difficult anymore.
I see the interaction as my challenge, and it has worked every time!
