Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Difficult People

Over 325 Ready-to-Use Words and Phrases for Working with Challenging Personalities

By: Renee Evenson

Narrated by: Jill Blackwood

Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

The key to a harmonious work environment is not by working among people with similar personalities whom you never clash with. Instead, learning to interact effectively with difficult coworkers is essential for success.

Most of us are going to work today with individuals who at times come across as incompetent, lazy, spotlight-hugging, whiny, or backstabbing. Then, tomorrow we go to work with them again and again. Like it or not, the bulk of our waking hours are spent with people at work—people who can grate on our nerves.

Communications expert Renee Evenson thoroughly explains how anyone can learn how to confront head-on the difficult situations that can arise when dealing with these personalities, before they fester and spread.

In Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Difficult People, Evenson shares practical and easy-to-use tactics such as:

• Thirty common personality traits, behaviors, and workplace scenarios along with the phrases that work best with each
• Nonverbal communication skills to back up your words
• Sample dialogues that demonstrate how phrasing improves interactions
• A five-step process for moving from conflict to resolution
• “Why This Works” sections that provide detailed explanations

Button-pushing situations are going to come up today at work—and tomorrow too. Don’t let them rent space inside of you and turning everything to mold. Instead, choose to deploy simple phrases to regain control and resolve conflicts.

When you do, you, your colleagues, and your company will be all the better for it!

©2014 Renee Evenson (P)2021 AMACOM

Helping resource

This is a helpful book. The only thing I didn't like was it took too long to get to the Powerpoints. Sometimes I didn't even know what she meant.

should be called ....difficult people at work

This is a good audio. it's focus is on people at work. None the less great information.

Don’t do it

While some of the premises were valid it was super tough to listen to. I didn’t make it halfway through. The reader sounded like she was a second grade teacher reading to her class.

Perfect for Young leaders

This might not be a powerful resource for seasoned leaders but for young leaders it’s a step in the right direction.

Repetitive

Struggled to finish. Could have been done in 2 chapters if it didnt repeat itself so much. helpful tips on effective communication and conflict resolution but no need to repeat each step more than 2x.

Good basic ideas, but misleading title

The title is a little misleading, the book is less about specific phrases to use than it is about working through a series of steps to solve conflict. It isn’t really about dealing with difficult people either, it is about commonly occurring workplace conflicts and how to handle them. Some of the book is pretty elementary so I would recommend it to someone who is working to develop their social skills from the ground up.

Great Conflict Management

This book has many practical solutions for every day situations that flare up at work and home.

A pretty good book

The narration is well done and the lessons are good.
The staged dialogues are too easy to solve the problem though. The author assumes everyone works in the others best interest. Would have been good to hear how to deal with a manipulator or narcissist

Good lessons, but lacking

I think this book provides some good lessons on conflict management and dealing with people at work. The most important of these lessons being that if you have a problem with someone, either learn to ignore it, or if it really bothers you, say some thing about it.

Overall though I have some issues with the book. I think the book’s main issue is that the lessons given implicitly assume the person you are having a conflict with is reasonable in nature. To this end the book felt very naive, and there were certain scenarios given that were so far from what reality would be, it made me wonder, “does this author really have experience in this particular scenario?” Other scenarios were much better.

In many cases I thought the authors inclination to offer “solutions” as presumptive and self-righteous, and don’t agree at all that the approach given is a good one for all cases.

My experience has taught me that some people are not reasonable, and have an ego or identity so fragile that they wouldn’t dream of “compromising” (I.e. “losing”). It would be helpful to give insight into situations that are not “winnable” as in many circumstances, this is the case with toxic people.

I also think there is a male/female dynamic that wasn’t addressed at all. Men and women deal with conflict differently and in certain circumstances in the book, the approach didn’t jive with me (a man).

As a final note, I just think providing fake conversations is never good. They come off as naive or too simplistic. Many times I thought, “am I listening to a required training from work?” I would have enjoyed far more a comprehensive analysis on each type of person and why they behave the way they do, and how to deal with it.

Helpful over and over and over..... and over.

I found my self thinking "I've heard this before." This book is full of helpful tips, tricks, and mindsets. However, the reinforcing sample conversations can be a bit much to get through. The narrative sometimes uses the same basic conversation with slight nuanced differences over and over, giving the feeling that you're reading in circles.