: Bill Eddy LCSW Esq., L. Georgi DiStefano
: It's All Your Fault at Work! Managing Narcissists and Other High-Conflict People
: Unhooked Books
: 9781936268672
: 1
: CHF 8.30
:
: Management
: English
: 244
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
No, it's not just your imagination-more and more people in the workplace today have high-conflict personalities. Co-workers, clients, even bosses are behaving in narcissistic or bullying ways, choosing targets and then placing blame on them, treating them with disdain, or otherwise acting in aggressive, inappropriate ways. Some go so far as to spread damaging rumors, harass, or directly sabotage their targets, among other extreme behaviors. These are not people who are just having an occasional bad day; these are people who display a repeated pattern of high-conflict behavior. And they aren't just difficult; they are the most difficult of people. They can make your life at work stressful, frustrating, and extremely challenging. The good news is that their behavior is not about you-it's about them. What's more, you can learn strategies and techniques to deal with them more effectively at work. Based on Bill Eddy's high-conflict personality theory, he and co-author, L. Georgi DiStefano, expertly define the problem so you can recognize potential high-conflict people (HCPs) in your own work life. They describe the key characteristics of HCPs and the typical behavior patterns of five main types of high-conflict personalities. Then they walk you through their proactive approach for minimizing conflict and keeping interactions with HCPs as peaceful as possible. You'll learn about-and see examples of-how to use a simple, proven four-step method to help calm HCPs, analyze your options, respond to hostility, and set limits on extreme behavior. While you cannot ultimately change someone else's personality, you can adapt your own behavior and respond to the person in different ways that make things better at work for yourself, the high-conflict person, and your organization.

Chapter One

HIGH-CONFLICT PEOPLE

“IT ’S ALL YOUR FAULT!” Sound familiar?

High-conflict people are blamers. They blame anyone, anywhere. They blame people they know well; they blame complete strangers. They might even blame you!

High-conflict people are everywhere and they are increasing. Customers may yell at you. Co-workers may undercut you. A supervisor may be so disdainful to an employee that he or she becomes depressed and physically ill—costing the business thousands of dollars in lost work, health care costs, and low company morale. Business owners may act in extreme ways that inadvertently destroy the businesses that they built and that you relied upon for income, benefits, and retirement.

This book presents ways to manage the behavior of several types of high-conflict people in the workplace. It will help you recognize their predictable patterns of behavior and then use a simple four-step method—called the CARS Method—to calm them, analyze your options, respond to their hostility, and set limits on their extreme behavior.

A Pattern of Behavior

Whether you’re a customer, an employee, a manager, a business owner, or another professional who interacts with people in the workplace, “high-conflict” behavior can catch you by surprise and make your life miserable—before, during, and after work. Most people with extreme behaviors have arepeated pattern of high-conflict behavior. It’s part of who they are. They didn’t just make a mistake or act badly out of the blue—they have done this before and will do it again.

We think of them as “high-conflict” people or HCPs (for references to the singular person who is high conflict, we’ll use the abbreviation HCP). They aren’t just difficult. They’re themost difficult people, because their pattern includes the following four key characteristics:

• Preoccupation with blaming others

• All-or-nothing thinking

• Unmanaged emotions

• Extreme behaviors

To make matters worse, they lack insight into their own behavior and how they contribute to their own problems, so they don’t change their own behavior and instead focus intensely on others’ behavior. They sometimes becomepersuasive blamers, persuading others that the problem at hand really is all someone else’s fault—maybe even allyour fault!

Yes, chances are thatyou will eventually become atarget of blame for an HCP. And when someone treats you that way, you end up having to deal with it and them—because they have patterns of behavior that won’t just go away. For example, let’s look briefly at the narcissistic patterns.

Narcissistic HCPs

Today, narcissists are in the news and daily conversation more than ever before. Narcissists are, by definition, self-absorbed and egotistical. However, not all narcissists display the pattern of HCPs; some are simply eager to tell everyone how wonderful they are. Butnarcissistic HCPs are preoccupied with blaming others. They focus on atarget of blame and get an ego boost by making themselves look superior to another. They will pick on their target, manipulate them with charm and anger, or outright blame them or publicly humiliate them—all in an effort to distract others from thei