ETHICS
8 ways to ethically deal with difficult people Yes, you can navigate difficult relationships without compromising your ethics.
If you have been in the workforce for any amount
of time, you most likely have dealt with difficult people. It can be challenging to stay true to your own ethics and values when dealing with these personalities, but the way you behave around difficult people matters to your character and can impact your career. Let’s examine ways to be effective in these fraught interactions. First, how do we define “difficult” people? A 2020 Psychology Today article says: “A personality is difficult when the individual does not honor and engage in the usual rules and social conventions taught by society for fairness and mutual respect. Difficult personalities can take many forms, including: engaging in a passiveaggressive communication style, being overtly hostile or verbally aggressive, having a bad temper, trying to split allegiances and loyalties of those around them, feeling threatened when someone seems too
Elizabeth Pittelkow Kittner
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DISCLOSURES
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SPRING 2022
competent or strong, and getting defensive or even combative when someone holds them accountable for inappropriate behavior.” Other traits that make for challenging interactions with a coworker, supervisor or client may come to mind, and it is good to be aware of the characteristics you find difficult. Being aware of these characteristics allows you to consider some positive strategies to enable you to keep your cool and maintain your ethical standards even when dealing with difficult people. Here are eight effective techniques: 1. Be calm and collected: A sure way to add fire to a heated interaction is to become agitated. Staying calm enables you to deescalate emotion and move to a place where solutions can be discussed. Think about a duck on the water: Ducks look graceful gliding across the water, but hidden underneath the surface, their feet
