 | How to Work with Just About Anyone: A 3-Step Solution for Getting Difficult People to Change |
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Product Description
THREE SIMPLE STEPS FOR TRANSFORMING YOUR WORKPLACE
Every office has them: the ever-complaining colleague...the co-worker who is constantly late for meetings...the boss who either blows up at you or blows you off...or the one person who drives everyone else totally crazy.
The problem is, the conventional methods -- like repeated warnings, threats, and heartfelt discussions -- for dealing with this negative behavior often don't seem to work. Drawing on a wealth of professional experience as well as forty years of research, Lucy Gill exposes the futility of these common practices and replaces them with a three-step strategy for creating a productive, conflict-free workplace:
1. Get to the heart of the matter by focusing on what the real problem is.
2. Determine what problem-solving methods to avoid so that you don't perpetuate the conflict.
3. Choose a different and even surprising approach that will solve the problem and keep it solved.
Whether you're just starting out in your career or you already have an office along the executive corridor, How to Work with Just About Anyone provides the key to success, satisfaction, and sanity in the workplace.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #859394 in Books
- Published on: 1999-10-20
- Released on: 1999-10-20
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .52" h x 5.54" w x 8.56" l, .60 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 208 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780684855271
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee.
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Review
Jim Kouzes coauthor, The Leadership Challenge; and Chairman, The Tom Peters Group/Learning Systems Delivers on its promise. You'll wish you followed Lucy Gill's three-step process years ago!
Robert M. Bramson, Ph.D. author of the bestselling Coping with Difficult People The methods in this book are unique. It is not a book about how to improve yourself of get along better with others. It is about how to get all those difficult people in your life to be more cooperative. I have used Lucy Gill's model with my clients and it works.
Keith Irwin managing partner, Tanner-Irwin Management consultants This book is a barnburner: with concise, clear examples, simple steps, and no clutter or jargon. Don't let this book get buried on your "self-help" shelf.
Dr. Richard Fisch director and principal investigator of the Brief Therapy Center at MRI, in Palo Alto, CA This book is a little gem. It's deceptive in its simplicity. Lucy Gill has managed to translate very new thinking about complicated problems into language that allows the reader to apply the concepts practically in the business world, and be light-years ahead.
Steven Brown former president of 800-Software Lucy Gill worked as a consultant in my company and produced great results. She used her methods very productively for us, and I am glad she has written How to Work with Just About anyone. Her humorous and conversational style is like having her in my office again, kicking ideas around. This is a great book.
Paul Watzlawick emeritus clinical professor, Stanford University; member of the Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA Anyone who's ever worked with a frustrating person should read this book. Step by step, Lucy Gill shows how to get even "impossible" people to change.
Roland Chazal industrial vice-president, Perrier Vittel, France With humor and subtlety, Lucy Gill offers a practical method for addressing difficult problems and for successfully getting people to change, and gives you the tools and the confidence to find solutions. Using her methods, we effectively and efficiently resolved very tough conflicts in our company.
About the Author
Lucy Gill is an internationally known authority on the prevention and management of difficult and nonproductive behavior, and is a Research Affiliate at the Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto -- the only management consultant to be accorded that status. Her clients include Bank of America, Varian, Rockwell International, TRW, Sun Microsystems, and a number of Silicon Valley start-up companies. She lives in Coulterville, California.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
The Care and Feeding of Problems: How Difficult Behavior Gets Reinforced
What do you do about impossible people? You know the kind:
- The manager who hands you a rush project and insists that you drop everything to get it done. Then the completed report sits on her desk for a month -- just the way it did the last time.
- The ambitious colleague who frequently criticizes your work in front of the boss.
- The otherwise good assistant who is chronically late. She always apologizes, but the excuses are as annoying as her tardiness.
It's the chronic offenders like these who drive you crazy, not the people who occasionally irritate. You can cope with your manager's bad day from time to time. It's when she's having a bad life and taking it out on you that the frustration sets in. When people continue to annoy you no matter what you say or do, that's when you begin to believe that they will never change or that you will never cope -- that the troubled relationship (or your job) is doomed.
Not only can you get these people to change their habits, but you can do it with surprisingly little effort and without confrontation. Sound impossible? It's not -- once you know the right approach. You're about to learn the method that will take the trial and error out of changing anyone's troublesome behavior.
The (Not) Impossible Dream
This method is a result of four decades of research at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, primarily the work of the Brief Therapy Center project. In the beginning the founders of MRI studied all types of communication. Then, while analyzing how people handle problems, they discovered that people often get stuck in problems because they pick -- and then inadvertently repeat -- a solution that doesn't work. Their solution was, in fact, prolonging the problem. The researchers figured that the problem would disappear if they: 1) focused on these ineffective solutions rather than on the original problem; and 2) convinced their clients to try something significantly different. So they put aside the traditional diagnostic labels and techniques of psychotherapy and set out to test this hypothesis. Calling their work "brief therapy," the researchers challenged themselves to resolve clients' problems in a maximum of ten one-hour sessions. Over the years they developed and fine-tuned a unique formula that is extraordinarily successful in resolving impossible problems quickly.
Dr. Richard Fisch, John Weakland, and Paul Watzlawick, the senior team members, were curious to see whether their method would be as effective with business problems as it was with the problems of families and individuals. In 1984 I was invited to join the Brief Therapy Center's research team. At that time I had worked for twelve years as a management consultant in a variety of organizations, primarily helping teams function effectively and coaching managers on how to handle difficult and nonproductive behavior. We began to collaborate on business problems, blending the center's techniques with my consulting tools. For instance, if a protracted conflict in an organization was the result of a "systems" problem -- like inadequate definitions of people's goals or roles, ineffective communications channels, inappropriate decision styles, or work-flow bottlenecks -- then traditional consulting practices sufficed. Remove the cause of friction and the friction ceases. At other times, good management practices were already in place but the conflict persisted, perhaps due to individuals finding each other's habits intolerable. Then the center's three-step model was the better tool. When the cause of the trouble was a combination of these forces, then we used a blend of the methods. In the course of working on a number of problem situations, we discovered that the center's method worked as well with business problems as it had with individual and family difficulties. In fact, the process saved my clients a great deal of time, trouble, and expense.
This book will show you how to use adeptly the three-step process that resolves repetitive problems. You will learn how to:
- cut your problem down to size (you'll find that you have less work to do than you thought);
- figure out what inadvertently perpetuates your problem (you'll discover how much control you already have); and, based on that,
- select a new approach that will get you the change you want.
These three steps may appear simple, and they are -- as simple as programming your VCR. It's simple, that is, when you've read the directions. And when you've mastered these three steps, you'll know how to quickly get people to stop driving you crazy.
You'll learn some straightforward ways to get people to quit their annoying habits. You'll also learn some unusual solutions because, with repeat offenders, common-sense methods often don't work. For example, it may make good sense to simply ask your abrasive colleague to stop criticizing you in front of your boss. It is a logical approach and worth a try. But if it doesn't work, there is no point in trying it over and over. As you will learn, a significantly different approach will now be needed if you want your peer to change. Imagine telling him that you find his criticism useful and would like him to do it even more, especially in front of your boss. Sounds crazy, but a client of mine did exactly that and quickly got her peer to back off. You'll learn how to use such unusual but effective solutions, and many simpler ones as well.
If you've tried unsuccessfully to change someone's behavior, you already know what doesn't work. You're about to learn what does. Here's a preview of the first step in the process: identifying specifically what behavior needs to change.
Yes, Virginia, People Really Do Change
When repeatedly faced with a manager's or a spouse's irritating behavior, I have often heard people give up, saying, "What's the use? People can't change." It's how we console ourselves when we can't get someone to change. In effect, we're saying that our efforts didn't fail, but rather that the irritating person is like the tiger that can't change its stripes. While comforting, it doesn't do much to change those aggravating spouses and thoughtless co-workers.
The fact is, people change all the time. For instance, many of us change our behavior quickly when the CEO walks into the room. We probably behave differently with our colleagues than with our spouses. And it's not likely that we treat each of our children exactly the same (just ask them). We change our behavior all day long. But, you protest, that's not the same as the tiger changing its stripes; however, as you'll see, it's not usually the stripes that need changing.
The problem with saying "people can't change" is that the statement isn't specific. People can't change what, precisely? Let's say that you're frustrated with your hyperactive assistant who is still bouncing off the walls despite your efforts to change him. Before you declare that he can't change, you need to ask yourself: What specifically did you try to change about him? What problem does his hyperactivity create? To succeed at changing him, you have to work on the problem his troublesome behavior creates, not vaguely try to transform his personality. You probably don't really care that he has so much energy; you just wish he'd stop cracking his knuckles, drumming the table, and popping up and down in meetings. In other words, while you can't expect him to become Mr. Mellow, you can get him to stop his constant interruptions in staff meetings. Once you've attacked and fixed the specific problem his hyperactivity creates, you might find the rest of his high energy tolerable. You could even enjoy having him around.
Changing the Changeable
Clarifying the specific problem focuses you on changing the changeable. For example, a friend of mine is a nonstop talker. She can literally go on for hours relating story after escapade after travelogue. She's intelligent and creative and a great storyteller, but I get worn out after hours of listening. I want conversation, not just monologue. One day, after about forty minutes, I interrupted her with a time-out signal and said: "While these stories are entertaining, I really look forward to our conversations -- when we kick ideas and theories back and forth. When do we get to do that?" Her response flabbergasted me. "That's what I've been waiting for," she said. I guess while she waited, she was just filling in the empty space with stories.
Obviously my usual method of dealing with her -- politely not interrupting, waiting for her to run down -- hadn't worked. I have since learned to interrupt and say, "OK. I need conversation now," or in a twist on the old phrase, "Enough about you. Let's talk about me." She then finishes her story and we spend the rest of our visit in satisfying conversation. I've noticed that she has begun to ask me about myself at the start of our time together, making sure I get my turn first, so to speak. I now look forward to seeing her.
Did she change? You bet. She can and does still talk non-stop, but the problem I had with that is resolved. I get to be heard too, we spend a good deal of time in first-rate conversation, and I've learned how to get her to stop when I've had my fill of monologue. Has she altered her style for others? Only for those who have changed their way of dealing with her. For everyone else, I recommend earplugs.
So it's not whether people can change, but whether we can get people to change what we want them to. After all, even an insufferable boss is nice to someone. The question is not whether that person can change; the question is: How can we make sure we are the ones that boss is nice to?
To succeed in getting people to change their irritating behavior, it's useful to recognize what drives people to behave as they do. Once you see behavior from this new perspective, a world of options opens up.
The Predictable Element in...
Most helpful customer reviews
34 of 38 people found the following review helpful.
Pretty good
By Ms Diva
I read a great deal of personal growth/self help books. This one has some good ideas, but it's not as good as alot of ones I've read. I must admit that Gill is a good, clear writer, and that she obviously understands the underlying theory that her suggestions are based on. She uses alot of examples to illustrate her points. The book is well laid out and easy to follow. I particularly like that it contains a summary of the steps at the end. The author also provides a (too brief) bibliography to give readers a chance to get more information and support in using the techniques presented.
Despite the fact that the book does have good points, and some people will probably find it useful, I didn't find it particularly helpful for me overall (although I did agree with certain points -- notably, the idea that people have a tendency to repeat the same mistakes). It's too short, and I find that the techniques she suggests, which are based on the work of Brief Therapists such as Paul Wazlawick, are too cognitively based -- I have an admitted bias against cognitive behaviourism. In my experience, some of the techniques she suggests are superficial and they don't lead to long term change. They don't get to the root of the issues between people and really allow you to connect and improve the relationship. If you want to do that, this book won't help.
If you just want to get along well enough to achieve a task, and aren't really interested in the long term health of the relationship or achieving true communication, some of the ideas here might work. But this approach deals with the symptoms, it doesn't get to the root of problems. Some would go so far as to say it involves being manipulative -- I'm not sure.
If you have some familiarity with solution focused therapy/thinking, and you generally believe in the benefits of that orientation, you will find this book of value. If, like me, you prefer a more humanistic, person-centred theory, you likely won't get as much out of this book. I'm glad I read it, and I did take a few ideas from it, but I've already put it in my "to give away" bag.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful.Powerful perspective that you can't find elsewhere
By A Customer
Lucy Gill presents a new approach to dealing with problem people at work that is simple, fresh and extremely useful. The bottom line? Stop using the same old methods that don't work for you. If you want to see new results, you've got to employ some of the new tricks put forth here. This book will help you, whether you are stumped on dealing with a boss or employee. If you have ever felt frustrated by a bully, nerd, lightweight, arrogant or some other problem-causing co-worker, then here is your book.
This well-written book is a quick, enjoyable read that will give you more power in those moments when you feel powerless.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful.Original and practical
By A Customer
I recommend this book highly. As an IT manager I can testify to its practical tips for getting to the heart of a difficult situation and resolving it effectively. It's insightful, clever, witty and useful. The techniques presented can provide relief when dealing with a difficult colleague, superior or subordinate. I was particularly impressed with the methodologies for determining what the real problem is, instead of just complaining and "horribleizing." The solutions may well make you laugh, but they work.
http://astore.amazon.com/amazon-book-books-20/detail/0684855275
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