Dealing with difficult people is a given. At some point, you’re going to face someone who doesn’t play fair with their communication and you may have to de-escalate a tense moment. Your healthy communication style will come in handy when you feel the tension. There are a lot of ways you can de-escalate a difficult person, including walking away, which may be the best solution from time to time, but there are three key ways to de-escalate most difficult people.
- Remain calm and assess the situation
- Model appropriate behavior
- Use ration rather than emotion
Remain calm and assess the situation. When someone is being difficult, there are two things to do quickly- stay calm and find out if it’s worth being in communication with them. Sometimes the best thing to do is disengage or leave. Other times you can’t, and you must deal with what is happening. Stay calm, use deep breathing and a mature mindset no matter how elevated the other person becomes. Reassess if the conversation has become useless and disengage at any point it no longer makes sense to seek resolution.
Model appropriate behavior. Effective communicators can use subtle non-verbal and verbal cues to help de-escalate difficult people. Listening to understand, repeating back what’s been said, nodding, keeping eye contact all model healthy communication. A lot of times difficult people don’t feel heard. That makes them increase their intensity to try to make a point. You can help reduce their intensity by modeling healthy and appropriate communication.
Use ration rather than emotion- Difficult people tend to operate from emotion. The intensity of how they feel can impact their behavior. Don’t give in to emotional reactions that might creep up on you. Stay rational and in the moment focused on what is happening rather than how you feel about it. Using logic can help you communicate facts rather than feelings and you may be able to diffuse anger or other high emotions.
Difficult people are everywhere. They are in our homes, in our places of work, and out in the community. It’s easy to find ourselves smack dab in the middle of a difficult situation without much effort. Having healthy communication skills can save you from falling into an emotional reaction that won’t solve any problems. Remain calm and assess if you need to engage the difficult person, model the right behavior, and stay rational while you de-escalate the situation.
