Fun Ways To Deal With Difficult People

Fun ways to deal with difficult people for meetings, presentations, focus groups and courses

If you are running an event like a meeting, presentation, sales pitch, focus group, or course

You may have to deal with some funky behaviour like people coming in late, texting on their phone, or falling asleep

But what can you do if you can’t tell them off

Like when the person misbehaving is senior to you

A prospect

Or a paying customer

You need to take control without losing your cool!

First

Take a deep breath and remind yourself

That the bad behaviour is probably not about you

“My son is ill at home”

“I have no reason to be here”

“I got no sleep last night and it is hot in this room”

Then

Use these 5 fun strategies

#1 easy way to deal with lateness

Because you can’t do this: “we are going to have a chat about timekeeping!”

Close the door and start on time! Don’t reward what you don’t want by waiting

And because no-one likes to do this (walk into a session that has already started)

He won’t be late again and neither will the rest of us

Sorry guys!

You didn’t delay your session, inconvenience the people who were on time, get stressed or annoyed and you got an apology… all without saying a word

#2 easy way to deal with discontent

If the group is just generally unhappy, don’t ignore it, deal with it head on

If the session is optional

If the session is optional

Start by stating the purpose of the event and who would benefit from it, then let or make, the people who feel they would not benefit leave

If the session is mandatory

Talk about how people feel about the event first

If it threatens to carry on too long or become too destructive start questions with ‘considering’

Like this

Considering we ARE moving to Alaska, what would you like to get out of the session today?

Repeat until everyone is happy to get on with the session despite their reservations

#3 easy way to deal with 20 questions

Sometimes you might need to reign people in when they get off-track

If they are irrelevant questions say: ‘let’s talk about that afterwards since it’s not a group issue’

If the questions are relevant (but there are just too many)

Say: ‘Let’s get back to our session since we are running out of time’

Use the strategies for dealing with dominant types

If one or two people dominate the meeting and no-one else can get a word in

“My experience is blah blah blah”

Subtly discourage them using your position in the room

Without turning your back on them move to a position where you will not have eye contact

Sitting on their desk is also a great way to include them with your proximity but give the floor to the rest of the class

Try mentioning something they said earlier. No-one is humiliated and the near miss really makes people perk up

While you are talking very slowly walk towards them. Make sure you don’t just look directly at them, that would be a bit creepy

This also works really well if someone is nodding off

It works like magic

Ta da, you now own the room. Want to see more fun stuff?

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