I read an article on Advertising Age, written by Phil Johnson, titled 'The Joys and Sorrows of Dealing With Clients,' in which the author says that his dealings with one particular client moved him to go out and buy books on the topic, enough to fill a shelf in his office.The author divided people up into 'nice' and 'mean,' and offered the advice that one should stay away from the mean ones (difficult people).

My response to this is that the frame of reference that most people seem to have on difficult people determines their results in dealing with them. Seems to me that most of the literature on the subject has the unfortunate habit of assigning negative labels and assumptions to people behaving badly, then blaming 'those' people for what 'you' have to deal with, while largely holding those who wrestle with difficult people unaccountable for how they go about it. That's a double whammy against dealing with them effectively. Once you label someone as 'toxic' or 'mean,' or a 'bully,' your behavior in response to them will be organized around it. So instead of connecting to your resourcefulness you wind up connecting to your reactions. Look it up for yourself, you may be amazed at how many authors insist that there are actual toxic people in the world, and they're at fault for all of our relationship problems. Well, maybe you won't be amazed. Maybe you believe this too. I don't.

There is a better approach to bad behavior. Assume a positive intent behind it (human behavior is purposeful), and then approach dealing with it strategically.

Bad behavior, as far as I can tell (with thousands of interviews to back up this view) is the result of a person's lack of flexibility and resourcefulness in dealing with a changing and uncontrollable world. It's what people do when they perceive that their good intentions are being thwarted by the behavior of others, and they run out of options for dealing with it. In this way, everyone becomes someone's difficult person at least some of the time, by being pushy, negative, disruptive, vague, self absorbed, or completely withdrawn.

While there are nice people in the world (I like to think I'm one, and clearly so are you), they often try being nice to people who either don't know about or don't care about nice behavior, and then, stymied and confused, wonder what the deal is with those 'mean' people. I say nice is nice with nice people. With everyone else, something else is needed.

The only exceptions I make to this view are people who have substance abuse problems (and thus develop a multiple personality of sorts) or are in some other way truly mentally disturbed (manic depressive, narcissistic, etc.) In such cases, most of us aren't equipped with the time, interest or skills to interact with them, none of the books on that author's shelf (or the 38 different books he found on Amazon that address the subject of difficult people) really apply, and the best choice is to get as far away as fast as possible.