How People Tick: A Guide to Difficult People and How to Handle Them by Mike Leibling
Mike Leibling coaches individuals and groups in the art of handling difficult situations and people. In this book he looks at how to understand patterns of behaviour that we find annoying, and how we can change them. And this is essentially the central idea to his book. It’s not about identifying how to deal with unpleasant confrontations, out-of-control meetings or deadlocked colleagues.
His approach is to recognise the behavioural patterns of individuals, so you learn how to deal with them in a better way, rather than being challenged with the difficult events that arise time and time again. In other words, it’s about identifying the cause of the problem, rather than continually dealing with the problem itself.
The book is divided into various sections, each concerned with a different type of individual. These range from angry people to selfish people, to workaholics to messy people. In fact, he identifies 45 different types (thus 45 sections) of behaviour which he believes can cause problems. Within each of these sections, there are sub-sections including a definition of the behaviour (for example, ‘blamers’ are those who ‘may blame other people or blame circumstances, or just not take responsibility for their own actions’), followed by what ticks us off about them, how it can happen, tips, and a case study example.
The tips are particularly useful, and on several occasions, example phrases are even given – such as how to diffuse an angry person. Incidentally, according to Leibling, the way to do this is ‘by saying: “You’re right.” And whenever I’ve said this, it has pretty much always taken the wind out of their sails.’
In general, it is left to you to diagnose the behaviour of the person you are dealing with in order to prescribe the correct remedy. For the most part this should be fairly easy, as although he doesn’t go into huge detail about each type of behaviour and exactly how to identify it, Leibling mentions a few traits per section which can be recognised immediately. He is more concerned about the best way to handle these people, which as a reader, you are more likely to be interested in.