Dealing with People You Can't Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst

When I first saw this book on a display at the library in my office, I was both intrigued and skeptical, but the intrigue won out when I requested it from the public library. I am rather stubborn and resistant to change, so I did not know how much of this book would actually help me. Still, you never know.

I must say that this book has been extremely informative and helpful. It presents ten different types of problem people and provides specific strategies for dealing with them. The authors show you what the motivation is behind each problem person's method of attack and provide concrete examples of situations where the various strategies are put into play. There is even an appendix with information on what to do when YOU are the problem show more person; for example, if you are a "Think-They-Know-It-All".

The language is straightforward and simple, although it is littered with rather too many "it's" where "its" is supposed to go. (Of course, I tend to argue that even one is too many...) And in the first part there are pockets where the writing becomes kind of children's-show-host-y as the writers guide you very, very carefully through each of the steps they discuss. The anecdotes and scenarios are all fairly good, with the exception of the quite-obviously-the-Beatles one where John and Paul debate accepting the offer to perform on the Ed Sullivan show. All of the shoehorned-in Beatles lyrics as dialogue were really, REALLY painful for me. It was more the excessiveness of it than anything else. Seriously, almost every single sentence was a Beatles lyric. Too much.

But these are just a few distractions. The substance of the book is quite satisfying, and I will be taking extensive notes for future reference. If you're interested in it, take a look. show less

Overall this was helpful. This is a book about how to deal with people at their worst with a correlated but unstated message - how not to be one of those people. There is a fair amount of cliche, self-helpish gook to get through but there is some very solid material as well.

Solid listen.

I enjoyed this book. It was fun to read, but still gave some good tips. I actually had several types of people at my job who fit into the categories this book created. It helped me change my own communication with those people who were at first very difficult to deal with.

I thought this might have some interesting tips, but it wasn't very useful. Nothing new or interesting and not written that well. There are many better books out there about getting along with others.

A little old-fashioned in ideas but all in all informative. I'll be trying a few of these techniques!

This book is a humourus way of dealing with people in a workplace who might be annoying/detrimental to your work. It follows a model based on understanding that person who is annyoing you, then ways to deal with the ten most common unwanted co-workers.

Anyone going into a career that has to deal with co-workers could get something out of this book

This was alright. I am not a huge fan of categorizing people and acting as if what works for one will work for all. And I guess if you need a book to tell you that being compassionate will help you to get along with people, maybe this is something you should check out.