The BIGG Successs Show
How to Deal with a Mean Person
A new study shows mean breeds mean; we share ways to avoid the trap. Find a written summary of today's show along with a link to the study at BIGGSUCCESS.COM.
- Welcome to The Big Success Show. Today, we'll talk about how to deal with a mean person. - The Big Success Show with George and Mary Lynn. - We hear a lot about violence. We see a lot of violence, I guess, on television, in the movies, video games, you know, seems like physical violence is all around us. - USA Today cites a recent study at Brigham Young University that shows that seeing people being mean to others, affects us as well, and we've got a link to that study at bigsuccess.com today. - And they describe two types of aggression, physical aggression and relational aggression, or what I think of as mental aggression. And it shows that, and this is what I found really surprising, Mary Lynn, that people who experience relational aggression or mental aggression respond just as aggressively as people who've experienced physical aggression. - Yeah, well, you know, it ticks us off. We all have dealt with mean people. People who are mean from time to time or who don't have a problem lashing out at you. A prime example, when I was a production director for a group of five radio stations, which means that I oversaw the creating of commercials for five stations, I'd implemented a new procedure that some of the salespeople didn't like. So I was back in the sales area, all the salespeople were there in their cubicles, and one decided to call me out, and he was like, "Hey, I don't appreciate, you know, whatever." He was really, really mean about it and caught me off guard. - And we'll talk about how you handle that in just a second. Real quickly, I'll just interject. I had a person that we were grooming to be a manager. Thought he had all the qualifications, but the interesting thing was we found that as he got into situations where, you know, there's two ways it can go. It can either get calmed down or it can get inflamed, right? Or it can flame up, and every single time it just blew up. And so as a leader, you have to learn how to diffuse situations. - Right, and coming up, we're gonna talk about just that. How to diffuse a situation. - Today, we're talking about a study that shows that when we're faced with mental aggression, we respond fairly aggressively. And we wanna talk about now how you go about diffusing situations, how you calm things down when someone comes at you aggressively. - Well, let's go back to my story when I was confronted by the salesperson in front of all the salespeople. He was very upset with this procedure that I had implemented. It was great for me because it helped me stay on top of all the orders that were coming in, but it provided one more little piece of work for the sales staff. And when he confronted me and was really rude about it, I just stopped. I said, oh, I won't say his name. I said, I'd be more than happy to talk about this with you in my office, but if you really have a problem with it, your direct manager, your sales manager signed off on this. So I'd suggest you go complain to him. Otherwise, please just do the procedure. Thank you very much. - Thank you very much. - Yes. - That's what you really said. - I did. I was shaking all the time, but I did. - Well, and Marylin, you're illustrating that sometimes the best thing you can do is just say that one or two things that allows you to diffuse it at the moment and deal with it at some future point in time, fairly immediate future, but still be able to deal with it in just a little bit. Now, if it's in person, like your example, you know, you can do what you said. You can also do this even on the phone though, right? If things start getting heated, someone makes kind of a very verbally aggressive comment. If you feel the teapot starting to boil, right? You can just ask them, say, hey, you know what? I've got something I need to handle here. I'm so sorry to cut you off, but can I give you a call back here in a little bit? And even email, you know, you can do the same thing with email. - Yeah, the key is to step away before you say something that you're going to regret. - And it just makes the situation flare up instead of start to calm it down. - Right, and hey, this is where you can use a close colleague, a friend, even your spouse, if you need to call someone and just vent, say to them what it is you really want to say to this idiot. But then take it back to that professional level and keep yourself under control. - And if you feel like you don't want to talk to somebody about it or for some reason, nobody's available, you can always write it down, right? I mean, it's very cathartic to just sit there and, you know, I feel sorry for my keyboard sometimes. As I sit there and pound it out when I'm really upset, but just releasing really, really helps you. - Right, but make sure you're using a word document, not something that can accidentally be sent via email. - Yeah, that's a good point, Mary Lynn. - And then when you do come back to this conflict with this person, report what's happened, you know, try to bring back in the facts and-- - Show them you understand their point of view, right? - Exactly. - Even if you don't agree with it, you can understand maybe where they're coming from. And then move towards a focus on the resolutions. - Effective leaders deal with confrontation head-on. But the thing is, they always keep the purpose of the communication in mind. And that's what we have to remember, even when people comment us in a way that's inappropriate, we can't respond in kind because we have the bigger purpose in mind, and we want to get the situation resolved and move on. - You can get a written summary of today's show on our site at Big Success, that's bigwith2gsuccess.com. We also have a link to the study that we mentioned earlier. And while you're there, sign up for our free Big Success weekly to get the tips and tools you need to be a big success. - There's a new study, Mary Lynn, that shows it about a little over 80% of people say they want to start their own business. Next time, we're gonna see if we can talk you out of it. - Now, why are we gonna do that? - You gotta tune in to find out. - All right, until then, here's to your big success. - The Big Success Show at B-I-G-G success.com. (upbeat music) (chimes)