Proven strategies to de-escalate conflict, set boundaries, and maintain professional composure.
We've all been there, trying to reason with an incredibly difficult person. The situation proves frustrating, maddening, and sometimes even frightening. The truth is you can't reason with an unreasonable person. However, there are proven techniques to better manage such dicey situations.
The difficult business issues that arose in 2020 and will certainly continue into 2021 make this an even more difficult issue to handle. Often, professionals resort to changing positions or moving to another area. However, difficult people are everywhere. It might be possible to avoid the first one or two difficult people, but how about the third, fifth, tenth person you encounter? Hiding isn't a permanent solution. So rather than turn to some drastic decisions each time, why not equip yourself with the skills to deal with them?
There are tactics that professionals can use with their boss, a customer, a family member, even a stranger. Keep in mind: the closer your relationship with the person, the more knowledge you'll have of what will best work to calm things down.
When you're dealing with a person behaving unreasonably, the fear response center in your brain is going to be activated. It's up to you to engage your conscious mind in order to defuse the situation. Some of these tips are general, suggesting a mindset to cultivate.
During this course we will examine some of the most successful techniques experts have identified to utilize when working with difficult people. Some of these tactics may be difficult at first but when you know the situation, understand the people involved, the tactics can effectively help de-escalate the issue and provide a sense of calm to the discussion.
Topics Covered:
Who Should Attend
All organizations, employees, management, staff, vendors and board members.
Lynn Fountain has over 45 years of experience spanning public accounting, corporate accounting and consulting. 24 years of her experience has been working in the areas of internal and external auditing. She is a subject matter expert in multiple fields including internal audit, ethics, fraud evaluations, Sarbanes-Oxley, enterprise risk management, governance, financial management and compliance. Ms. Fountain has held two Chief Audit Executive positions for international companies. In 2011, as the Chief Audit Executive for an international construction/ engineering firm, she was involved in the active investigation of a joint venture fraud. The investigation included work with the FBI and ultimately led to indictment of the perpetrators and recovery of $13M. Ms. Fountain is currently engaged in her own training and consulting business and is a regular trainer for the AICPA. Ms. Fountain is the author of three separate technical books. “Raise the Red Flag – The Internal Auditors Guide to Fraud Evaluations” was published by the Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation. -“Leading The Internal Audit Function” and -“Ethics and The Internal Auditor Political Dilemma” were published by Taylor & Francis In addition Ms. Fountain was a contributing author to the certification program exam for the National Association of Accountants. She also has certificate programs on various on-line platforms. Ms. Fountain has performed as an adjunct instructor for the School of Business for Grantham University and developed the first internal audit curriculum for the School of Business at the University of Kansas. Ms. Fountain obtained her BSBA from Pittsburg State University and her MBA from Washburn University in Kansas. She has her CGMA, CRMA credentials and CPA certificate (non-active).
