Interpersonal Skills

Coping with Difficult People

Difficult people at work can be aggressive, irrational, demanding or plain useless at their job! What’s the best way to deal with them?


Difficult staff not only affect their own performance and their team's but they can even send wider ripples throughout the whole organisation. They can be the cause of stress in other staff and may even be directly responsible for absenteeism, low productivity and falling profits.

This pack looks at some key issues about 'difficult' people and encourages participants to be more self-aware and to consider effective strategies to use when confronted with difficult behaviour in others, towards a positive outcome for everyone involved.

Customer feedback

  • Good exercise!

    – V McKintyre, Denplan

  • Well worthwhile for looking at the complexities of dealing with people.

    – Training Manager, Hospital NHS Trust

  • Stimulates debate and discussion and a sharing of personal learnings on managing difficult situations.

    – S. Thurston, ELT Solutions