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Speaker: Hello, and welcome back to yet another episode of the Commercial Leader podcast. My name is Bram Lagrou, and today we're going to talk about difficult people. Now, as you can already see by the looks of my fingers, is that I actually use quotation marks just for the simple reason that too often people talk about others being difficult and then call them all sorts of names.
But it doesn't have to be that way. Because we often judge the book on the cover, and we fail to see the common denominator or the silver lining that actually helps us, which is, in my belief, firm belief actually, that difficult people are our best teachers. Now, let that sink in for a moment.
Why would a difficult person be a teacher to us? Well, typically, it is [00:01:00] because that person reflects a trait, a behavior, a value, that triggers us off that often is our opposite. example, if I am somebody who's, extroverted, introversion will be something that presses my buttons potentially.
Or, if I, for example, dislike a trait in myself and somebody else in front of me presents that trait, I'll shoot them down on it not knowing that it's something that I don't like about myself. And so the point of it is people, they're a mirror reflection of us, and they can show us what it is that we need to own, because it's by owning the traits of the greats that we can actually become the best we can be.
And so whether we are a leader or we are client-facing as an advisor or a trusted sales professional, I think we have a lot to learn from this idea of [00:02:00] difficult people. Now, I don't know what your difficult person looks like, but as soon as you start describing those traits, or you just think of a certain person that you think is difficult in your life, it's going to give you a lot of insight as to how you can become more effective and more rounded as a person.
Very often I see that people, would have an issue with something that is different to them. The difference while we're traveling might-- the differences might be appreciated and at the same time we also like, consistency of certain foods and the likes and experiences, which is why we stay in the same hotel groups all the time, or why we might go to restaurants like McDonald's and the likes because it gives us consistency.
We do like consistency. And so the thing is now, as we go back to the environment at work or at home, there's gonna be certain people pressing our buttons. And I firmly believe that as you open yourself up to the idea [00:03:00] that there's a hidden gem in the situation that is presented to us. That is, for example, you'll find that certain people are nitpicky because they are too much factual and they need more information, and they keep asking for more and more and more. And you might have emails going back and forth and too many conversations later, whilst you just wanna get on with it and move quickly.
Well, all that means is that you might excel at one side, but the other side is one that yet you are to master. And so in a way, my personal honest opinion is: It's not that one or the other is good or bad, and it's not that our way is the best way over somebody else's or the other way around.
Every situation requires a certain approach. Now, as we go through, for example, P&Ls, you don't wanna be big-picture like. You wanna be able to [00:04:00] go into the details and the facts and figures and get it right. Having said that, there's a time and a place to look at the P&L more from a big-level perspective and zoom out, so to speak, rather than zoom in.
And so everything is situational. We talk about situational leadership, for example. Equally, we certainly at Lagrou Partners talk about situational salesmanship or professional sales effectiveness and business development. It's requiring a situational approach, which means consider who the buyer or the stakeholders are rather than just the product or the service.
And so situational effectiveness is definitely what we talk about. But once again, let's go back to where we started off. Difficult people are potentially, if we choose to, our biggest teachers.
And so imagine now if you use a behavioral style sort of metric like DiSC, which we [00:05:00] definitely use a lot at Lagrou Partners.
The DiSC methodology is very helpful. Now, if you then know that most people have one or two styles on the DiSC out of the four in total, which means it's predictable what sort of behavior that they will be showing up as in your environment. Yeah? The behavior traits are predictable.
That's just how it works. It also means that certain behaviors they won't display because it's not part of their makeup at this present time. Now, again, your makeup and their makeup might be quite well aligned, which is where you find each other, you have commonality. But the less you have in common, the more reason there is for fallout.
And it shows again then, it alerts you, if you want to, to the blind spots, or the areas that yet you haven't developed yet fully. That means one or two styles on the DiSC you display, you do well [00:06:00] at, you can easily communicate that way and leverage those strengths to your benefit and the benefit of others.
But because you lack in the other areas, those will be your Achilles heel, predictably, until you recognize that the other person was helping you to own up to that Achilles heel and almost like diagnosed your issue so that then you could do something about it.
Now, imagine now that you've gone on to something that I call the internship, where you identified the one style that yet you are to master, and you started making some inroads over time because you deliberately took the actions required to learn how to do it.
Awareness is first, then is the doing, and you gotta do it and sustain it long enough over time for it to become second nature and to become part of your skill set. Now, once you've done that, imagine then that you go from one or two out [00:07:00] of four styles to two or three out of four, and then a few months later, you think like, "Okay, let me now add the next one to my skill set, add it onto my toolbox," so to speak.
And now, suddenly you cover the whole spectrum, which means that if a situation warrants you to become very factual, analytical, and deliberate, you can. If you have to be very focused on results and quick decisions and calculate potential risks very quickly, then you can do that too. If though you're at a networking event, and it's all about opening up new doors and creating opportunities that you previously didn't have, or it's about you hosting people at an event of yours that is actually a very important event, then be more flamboyant, be more social gregarious, but also without too much talk about self, and also having a nice balance while asking questions about someone else.
If you can [00:08:00] manage all of that situationally in each one of them, you leveraging the best of all of those traits to your and other people's advantage, and that becomes really interesting.
If we don't do this, we keep reproducing the same old, same old, and we keep hitting our head against the wall with every single person that represents a blind spot of ours.
Every single person that presses our hot button continues to be a difficult person. And it's basically the universe, or God or whatever, keep putting people in front of us to give you the same experience over and over and over again until finally the penny drops.
You accept the lesson of it all rather than keep judging other people for what they bring you. People don't have to be difficult. They can be easy. working with people shouldn't be hard. It can become easy. You can just get [00:09:00] along with people. You can collaborate well. You can make it work with people no matter their traits or behaviors.
And as soon as you own up to that, and you raise up to the challenge, watch how everything changes for the better. Watch how culture improves, how your retention of key stakeholders and staff will also increase, how your turnover rates will go down, how you will need to recruit less people and therefore save money on recruitment and onboarding fees, how you will deal with every client and increase your strike rate and shorten your lead times, and so on and so forth.
All of these key business metrics, commercial metrics, that really make a difference, and basically improve your P&L over time. All of this goes back again to how people relate to one another. Whether it's inside the business or it's the business communicating with external stakeholders, [00:10:00] including clients.
All of that goes back to the same old notion that difficult people can be our biggest teachers.
I'm curious to hear what your thoughts were on this. Any thoughts or questions you have for us, please reach out to us at Lagrou Partners. We're always happy to have a chat with people. Look forward to seeing you again in the next episode of the Commercial Leader Podcast. My name is Bram. Bye for now.
