On April 3, 1998, our PRCSQA meeting was held at Genentech in So.San Francisco. Sixty-seven of us attended a Fred Pryor seminar on "How to Handle Difficult People". Our instructor was Steve Giesen. Steve handed out a workbook and put us all to work right away. Our assignment was to list the most frustrating types of difficult people we encounter in our lives. We discussed what the payoffs are for difficult people and the ways to approach a relationship problem.

The eight steps for handling difficult people are:

* Evaluate what is going on before you get involved.
* Attach a label to the characteristics and behaviors you see.
* Give up thinking there is a "Magical cure".
* Think from a "detached" perspective.
* Get in touch with the feelings you are having and where they are coming from.
* Develop a strategy for handling him/her.
* Rehearse what you will say.
* Do it and evaluate it.

Our instructor told us difficult people fall into seven categories:

The Autocratic Dictator
The Back Stabber
The Tight Lip(silent type)
The Critical Advice Giver
The Soothing Delayer
Fault Finder
The Downer

The remainder of the day was spent discussing the categories of difficult people, techniques for handling anger and how to keep difficult people from getting to you. Steve kept us all involved in the seminar by asking for our input and entertaining us with personal stories and work situations we could all relate too. It was an informative, fun seminar. Please let the PRC board know if we should offer something like this again.

- Sue Qualls