Quick Summary
We all have to work with people who sometimes make us… crazy. What can we do about it? In this presentation, I help participants to examine those really difficult people and look for ways to hack their own psychology, and the psychology of that annoying jerk to improve communication and working together. Attendees will leave with some specific tools they can use, and an understanding of what causes them to fall into the trap, as well as how to avoid those relational traps at work.
Presentation Outline
- Are (some) people just impossible jerks? – There are, statistically speaking, some jerks – but most of the time we can find productive ways to work with even the most demanding customers or team members.
- Why dealing with people is different from dealing with technology. Most technology has a really short lifespan. The things that we learn about tech only last a year or two before we have to learn something new. The good news about dealing with people is that once you learn some key principles of dealing with people, you can apply them over and over again for the rest of your life.
- We can’t make them help, but what if they wanted to help us? Most people are busy focused on the things that matter to them. If we can align what they want with what we want, they will WANT to help us achieve our goals.
- How the “Bozo bit” may be blocking your ability to work with them. If we decide that someone is a Bozo (we flip that bit “on”) then everything they say is filtered with “but a bozo said that.” What if you could turn that bit off? What would happen to your communication?
- Hacking into behavioral psychology is a win for them AND a win for you. Most of the time, these principles have a huge return on investment for both parties. It turns out that even if the other person won’t change at all – WE benefit from the brain chemicals we unlock when we use this new approach.
The principles of human interaction are learnable and very valuable. Most of us have just never studied them. We can take advantage of some “hacks” that improve our working relationship with even the most frustrating coworkers.
Target Audience
These ideas apply to everyone who has coworkers, team members or clients who are frustrating and difficult. However, this presentation is best received by geeks – whether they are engineers, software developers, enterprise architects, technicians or leaders of those teams. I have tailored this message so that highly technical experts will appreciate and value the ideas. I’ve delivered this to software developers, agile practitioners, business analysts and accounting professionals.
Possible Formats
This presentation can be delivered as a keynote, workshop, or half-day seminar. Keynotes can range from 30–70 minutes, depending on your needs. The ideal keynote length is one hour.
Intended Outcomes
- Audience members will be inspired when they realize that most of the time it is possible to engage productively with even the most intractable team members.
- They will begin to reflect on their own patterns of thinking and communication styles – seeing ways that they have unintentionally contributed to the challenges that they have been facing.
- They will have specific ideas that they can use to improve relationships, communication and collaboration with others.
Topic Authority
- I’ve worked with geeks for more than 30 years now. I understand how they think, how they solve problems, how they relate (and how they don’t) to others.
- As an executive coach, I’ve worked with highly technical experts in a variety of fields, helping them discover these ideas and how to implement them in productive ways. My clients have had great successes with this.
- As a Founding Partner in the John Maxwell team, for the last several years I have been an executive coach working with teams in multi-billion dollar companies and have seen over and over again how implementation of these principles transforms culture and addresses key challenges that people are facing every day.
