151 Quick Ideas to Deal With Difficult People

133Listen Up

The health of a company’s bottom line depends on how well its employees work as a unit to produce the quality of goods and services they wouldn’t be able to produce individually. To make that process work, you and your coworkers must master the art of the compromise. Compromising with a bully or other office troublemakers is something you probably swore you’d never do. But in your gut you know you have to.

Assignment

On a piece of paper, dissect a long-simmering dispute with a colleague and try to tease out a compromise.

A key element of the art of compromising is understanding what your opponent is saying.

“Seek first to understand and then to be understood,” author Stephen Covey says in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People ...