Leadership Development - The Easiest Way to Overcome Adversity

Have you found that leadership development requires you to be able to deal with difficult people sometimes? In a perfect world, there would be no such people and you could focus on the more important aspects of leading such as building your vision and connecting with the people who can truly become a part of making it a reality. Ah, wouldn't that be nice? Ok, back to the real world. So how do we deal with adversity as leaders and perhaps even use it to our advantage? Well, surely there are no quick fixes in regard to leadership development; however there is an easy method which you can use to deal with difficult people.


The first is that the difficult person who you are dealing with is most likely someone who you cannot fire or get rid of. That would be easy and would not require any leadership development training or conflict management skills. However, since it is someone you have to deal with there is one thing which you will want to keep in mind as you are resolving an issue with them: That person has value to your organization in some way. That is the first thing that you want to focus on, you'll see why in a second.


The next thing which you do is address their behavior instead of attacking them and let them know why the negative behavior bothers you. This means that you point out what kind of consequences are likely to occur as a result of the behavior. What you have to realize is that every behavior has some kind of a positive motivation, maybe an emotional need which this person is trying to fulfill. The problem is that most of the time people have come to believe that the only way for them to get what they want is with some ridiculous or negative behavior. This is to your advantage because if you get them to look at the true consequences then you can get them to make a different choice.


People will often defend a negative behavior because of the needs which they are trying to fulfill in doing it. You will not win by fighting that battle; they are ready for you with their boxing gloves on. Instead, get them to consider the true consequences. This is usually quick to sober people up since most of the time when someone is doing something destructive or hurtful to others they are not thinking about the true consequences.


Telling someone what your concerns are also gets them out of the defense mode and into the problem solving mode with you. It is a total win win. Once you have addressed this, suggest an alternative and again let them know what you feel that the positive consequence of that choice may be. This changes their focus to the solution based thinking and makes them less likely to defend the behavior. Finally let them know WHY you would like to see the change: because you value them as a part of your organization or team.


While this may take some practice, making it a part of your personal leadership development and practicing it until it becomes a habit will bring you much success in dealing with adversity.