12 tips for dealing with difficult people …

If you could ask a group of people you know and respect how to deal with “difficult” people, the first recommendation offered would likely be to avoid them.

“Stay away from them!”

“Don’t have anything to do with them!”

“Go the other direction!”

We should do anything we have to in order to avoid that difficult, obnoxious, frustrating person just looking to create drama and cause problems, right?

Sounds logical.

In fact, avoiding such people can, in some cases, be wise. But in other cases, it can be acting selfishly.

Yes, I say “selfishly” because most of the time we’re only looking after our own desires, not even our best interests; if we were to include our best interests, it wouldn’t always mean avoiding difficult people. Pastor Kent Crockett uses a story to help us understand that those people who have a tendency to frustrate us most can be used by God to bring out the best in us …

Earl Nightingale told how on one National Secretaries Day he gave his secretary some flowers. She remarked how beautiful they were, but wondered why they didn’t have any scent.

He informed her that the flowers came from a hothouse and explained that because these flowers were raised in an isolated environment, they didn’t attract insects (bugs) to pollinate them. As a result, they lost their scent. In the same way, fruit raised in a hothouse, because it doesn’t need to attract insects to scatter its seeds, doesn’t taste as good as fruit grown in its natural environment.

When we withdraw and isolate ourselves from people who “bug” us, it might make us feel safe from harm, but it affects us in other ways. We lose a part of what God created us to be, like a rose loses its fragrance and fruit loses its taste. God uses those people who bug us to bring out the best in us. Rather than running away from those people, let Jesus live His life through you, and the fragrance will come out.

Even if you wanted to avoid difficult people, the choice often isn’t yours. You can be minding your own business when someone suddenly, without invitation, steps into your life and engages you in an obnoxious manner. How do you deal with a difficult person so that the “fragrance of Christ” comes of out of you in times rife for frustration? Here are 12 tips for dealing with difficult people:

1. Stay spiritually tuned. The United States military is skilled at building the best fighting men and women in the world. Key to battle effectiveness of the U.S. military is the emphasis it places on training. Imagine what might happen if a soldier was suddenly sent to battle without diligent training, drilling, and testing? He or she would be unprepared for the battle, and ineffective in engaging an enemy. The same is true if we ignore maintaining a diligent practice of spiritual disciplines, most especially daily study of God’s Word and a life of prayer. By learning, understanding, memorizing, and living out the Word of God, and doing that in conversations with God through prayer, we are prepared to engage with all sorts of people in our lives, including the difficult ones.

2. Recognize you’re likely not the root of their issue, even if you’re getting the brunt of their bad attitude. Difficult people often have a lot of unresolved issues and conflicts in their lives, and they routinely splash their bad attitudes and actions about those things on anyone who crosses their path. Recognizing you’re not the source of their bad attitude can help you take their unwelcome behavior less personally.

3. Develop a default of empathy. When someone is being obnoxious, it can be hard to even want to empathize with them, but we can best manage our responses to such people when we pause to at least try to understand what’s going on in their life to provoke such behavior. Learning to have a default of empathy helps us with the next step …

4. Have a correct posture. When at all possible — and it’s almost always possible — respond with a posture of humility. When someone becomes belligerent and obnoxious, we want to get loud and bullish as well. The result is a battle that may not have occurred if only we had responded with humility, a posture scripture over and over again tells us to take when engaging with others.

5. Be patient. One of the greatest temptations most of us have with frustrating, difficult people is to be impatient with them. We want to strike back as fast as possible! Yet, often if we’re patient with difficult people, they will burn bright with rage briefly and quickly, and if not further provoked with impatient responses, may just calm themselves down and correct their attitudes, or at least reign them in. Our impatience can be anything from kindling to the equivalent of pouring gas on a fire; patience can be like robbing a fire of the oxygen it needs to keep burning.

6. Don’t retaliate. When a difficult person bursts onto the scene with obnoxious, belligerent, and arrogant behavior, the first thing we want to do is hit back. Don’t. “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing,” (1 Peter 3:9) is just one of several scriptures that exhort us to overcome any desire to strike back.

7. Always act in love. The biblical exhortation to love God and others isn’t just for those who treat us with love, or just basic respect, but extends even to our enemies. Love them! “Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs,” Proverbs 10:12. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Matthew 5:43-48.

8. Apply wisdom to the situation. That might mean responding by remaining silent, or asking questions specifically for understanding, etc. Instead of responding with your own round of irrational thinking and behavior, work to apply wisdom to the situation.

9. Speak with respect. Just because someone might inappropriately treat you with disrespect does not give you grounds to treat them the same way. if you respond to difficult people by being difficult yourself (e.g., disrespectful), then you simply have TWO difficult people being difficult with each other.

10. You may have to hold someone accountable for their actions. Steps one through nine make us grit our teeth because they challenge us to hold back from lashing out. This step isn’t the chance to finally unload on someone who has unloaded on you, but it might bring a measure of appropriate justice. Sometimes difficult people become harmful and must be called to account for their actions. In such cases, continue to speak respectfully and firmly while enforcing an appropriate boundary regarding their behavior.

11. Know when to walk away. Sometimes difficult people work themselves into such states of irrationality and that there is no reasoning with them in that moment or setting. There are times when the best thing to do is walk away until they can regain a more rational posture.

12. Pray for them. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” Matthew 5:43-44. Praying for difficult people is a means of loving them (acting in their best interest) and keeping your own attitude toward them check.

Our objective when responding to a difficult person behaving poorly shouldn’t be to “defeat” them, but to diffuse the situation enough so that a more rational and positive interaction can be experienced by all parties.

Scotty