Dealing With Difficult People
Everyone knows that the workplace is always full of situations where people often have difficulty getting along, where someone has been wronged, or where someone feels slighted in some way. Carrie Mason-Draffen, as Newsday reporter, has written a column for the last 10 years dealing with these issues. She constantly receives notes and letters from readers asking her how to handle a difficult situation at work. She typically calls in outside experts to help answer their questions. I've seen fellow collegaues, the department of labor and other experts lend their words of wisdom to help set an employer or employee straight - sometimes with legal implications and sometimes with just plain common sense. This past weekend I shared my insight with Carrie on a workplace situation that dealt with accommodating an employees allergies to perfumes and the like.
More importantly, however, Carrie recently wrote a book, 151 Quick Ideas to Deal With Difficult People, capturing a decade of a wealth of information into useful tips that everyone can use to make the workplace just a little bit better for all of us.