How to Work with Just about Anyone: A 3-Step Solution for Getting Difficult People to Change

By Lucy Gill

Book Overview

THREE SIMPLE STEPS FOR TRANSFORMING YOUR WORKPLACE
Every office has them: the ever-complaining colleague...the co-worker who is constantly late for meetings...the boss who either blows up at you or blows you off...or the one person who drives everyone else totally crazy.
The problem is, the conventional methods -- like repeated warnings, threats, and heartfelt discussions -- for dealing with this negative behavior often don't seem to work. Drawing on a wealth of professional experience as well as forty years of research, Lucy Gill exposes the futility of these common practices and replaces them with a three-step strategy for creating a productive, conflict-free workplace:
1. Get to the heart of the matter by focusing on what the real problem is.
2. Determine what problem-solving methods to avoid so that you don't perpetuate the conflict.
3. Choose a different and even surprising approach that will solve the problem and keep it solved.
Whether you're just starting out in your career or you already have an office along the executive corridor, How to Work with Just About Anyone provides the key to success, satisfaction, and sanity in the workplace.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684855275
• ISBN13: 9780684855271
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Powerful perspective that you can't find elsewhere

Lucy Gill presents a new approach to dealing with problem people at work that is simple, fresh and extremely useful. The bottom line? Stop using the same old methods that don't work for you. If you want to see new results, you've got to employ some of the new tricks put forth here. This book will help you, whether you are stumped on dealing with a boss or employee. If you have ever felt frustrated by a bully, nerd, lightweight, arrogant or some other problem-causing co-worker, then here is your book.This well-written book is a quick, enjoyable read that will give you more power in those moments when you feel powerless.

Original and practical

I recommend this book highly. As an IT manager I can testify to its practical tips for getting to the heart of a difficult situation and resolving it effectively. It's insightful, clever, witty and useful. The techniques presented can provide relief when dealing with a difficult colleague, superior or subordinate. I was particularly impressed with the methodologies for determining what the real problem is, instead of just complaining and "horribleizing." The solutions may well make you laugh, but they work.

Mental Aikido for Solution-Oriented People

Lucy Gill's realistic strategies add a significant number of new tools to the communication toolkit. The problem-solutions presentation is like mental aikido: you can see how to use the situation to help correct the situation.I'm a project management consultant and coach for Internet startups. My clients can usually handle the technical problems; it's the people that challenge them, especially in hectic "instant company, instant culture" environments. Lucy Gill's examples really tap an individual's "response-ability" to change their role in a situation and create solutions. I give my clients a copy of the book to reinforce our discussions - so they can take with them answers to the question "What do I say when I get back to my office?"

Good practical approach.....I'll be ready next time

Lucy Gill's "How to Work with Just About Anyone" hit close to home with me. Wish I had read this book before I gave up on a couple of projects because of people I couldn't work with. Hasn't happened to me often but when it did, I went half nuts fruitlessly trying those things that worked so well for me before with others, but now they didn't work at all. Lucy Gill is exactly on the mark, the harder I tried the worse things got.............the circular dance, she calls it. The book is too late for those particular projects but next time I'll be armed and ready. The first step of getting the problem clear with the "who is doing what to whom and how it is a problem" approach will not be forgotten. I'm half hoping I do get stuck in one of Ms Gill's feedback dance loops with someone again soon, just to try out her "doing the opposite" gambit. One other thing, this book definitely should be read before your kids reach their teenage years.

A well-written guide for handling nagging people problems

This is a great book! And not just because a whose who of world-class therapists say so in a bunch of testimonials on the fly-leaf. It's designed, not for therapists, but for the rest of us at home and at work who must deal with others who present problems that naggingly hang on and on. If you're fed-up, stuck, and exasperated with someone who keeps driving you crazy at home or work this book is for you. In it I found some of the best, sanest, and practical advice I've ever read on the subject. The word WOW comes to mind. Get a copy and see for yourself!