Another reason to delve into the details of the Dealing with Difficult People seminar is to know what kind of psychological jujutsu may be aimed at disarming your charming behavior patterns. For example, the brochure promises that attendees will "learn how to recognize a person's style of communication based on level of assertiveness and a tendency to focus on either people or tasks."
Apparently, some of the difficult elite have actually made the fatal mistake of focusing an unforgivable flaw that allows the easygoing to manipulate them into being -- ugh -- nicer. This certainly won't happen to you, since you don't focus on people or tasks or anything that isn't presented in HD on the Lifetime network. As for a "communication style," I'm not even sure the difficult and the proud know what that means. If a few grunts were good enough for our ancestors who lived in caves, I don't see why any more is expected from those of us who live in cubes.
"Me eat donuts in staff meeting. Me sleep. Me happy now." That's our idea of a communication style, and anyone who doesn't like it is going to need a lot more than a one-day seminar to get us to change. And speaking of that dreaded seminar, attendees are also promised that they will "walk away with the tools you need to effectively listen to others, including how to tune into body language and other key methods of communication we often ignore."
Now this does sound useful. If there are ways to be difficult that go beyond refusing to listen or cooperate or be a team player, we want to know it. As for tuning into our body language, go right ahead! When it comes to making our co-workers understand how much they revolt us, we want to make it as easy as possible.
