Achieving Success with Difficult People

Do you want to know how to interact with anyone, regardless of how difficult you perceive them to be? This course will give you the skills to effectively meet your needs while protecting the dignity and rights of others to form more cooperative relationships.

6 Weeks / 24 Course Hrs

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Offered in partnership with your preferred school

Florida International University

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Learning method

Self-Guided

$129

No instructor. Study on your own schedule

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Instructor-Moderated

$129

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Starting September 11 | October 16

Details + Objectives

Course code: sdp

This course will teach you how to see things from others' viewpoints based on their needs, values, beliefs, experiences, skills, knowledge, and self-interests. You will learn to approach difficult situations by answering the questions: who? what? where? when? how? and why? By answering these questions, you will understand who your difficult people are, what they're like, how you react to them, and their response to your actions.

You will also practice analyzing your interactions with those you share space with. By observing others closely, you will learn to read their identifying characteristics. Once you can identify which type of person you're dealing with, you will be able to choose appropriate reactions to their behaviors.

By the time you finish this course, you will understand that assertiveness involves taking responsibility when meeting your needs in a way that preserves the dignity and rights of others.

What you will learn

Become proficient at identifying and working with different personality types
Build assertive communication skills that benefit your personal and professional life
Learn how to improve relationships with difficult, stubborn, or even hostile individuals
Develop awareness of your own tendencies and how these affect your relationships

How you will benefit

Improve relationships with family, friends, and co-workers
Get what you want out of people and be sure your personal needs are met
Become an expert communicator and listener
Understand the motivations behind the actions and behaviors of all people

How the course is taught

Instructor-Moderated or Self-Guided online course
6 Weeks or 3 Months access
24 course hours

Outline

In the first lesson, you will find out the answers to four very important questions that impact the success of your relationships with others. The answers to these questions will help you identify your preferred communication styles.

In this lesson, you will begin to build a database about not only your difficult people—those who are different in communication style from you. You will also enhance your skills in reviewing and resolving problems with these people.

This lesson discusses four types of hostile people. These are people who want to control everything and everyone but have no self-control. This group is called Hostile-Aggressives.

In this lesson, you will learn appropriate options for interacting well with those who are stubborn or critical—people known as Negative-Thinkers.

This lesson focuses on the appropriate way to effectively deal with aggressive individuals. You will learn how to recognize these people and share space with them.

In this lesson, you will take another look at another personality type called Relators. Plus, you will learn ways to effectively handle the difficult subcategories of this type.

Some of your difficult people probably also feel that you're their difficult person, but you may be totally unaware of this. Do you feel that ignorance is really bliss? You will go through some exercises in this lesson that should help you figure it out.

In this lesson, you will work toward improving your own flexibility skills: confidence, tolerance, empathy, positivity, and respect. To help, you will answer a few questions about each of your own skill sets as you move through the lesson's materials.

In this lesson, you will learn that a certain set of characteristics is essential if you want to relate well with others. As you will find out, you must first improve your versatility skills to maintain a positive attitude, and then learn to view obstacles and problems as "opportunities."

After finishing this lesson, you will understand what assertiveness is and what it isn't. You will begin to see why assertive behavior is so important to your success in getting along well with others. You will also carefully examine your own level of assertiveness and identify which of your skills need fine-tuning.

This lesson focuses on simple, yet powerful assertive-communication techniques. You will learn to use self-disclosure appropriately to share information about yourself—your thoughts, feelings, and opinions—to build relationship trust and common ground.

After this final lesson, you may be surprised to discover that your listening skills need improvement. Listening well is a complex process, and your own selective filtering often keeps you from real understanding.

Instructors & Support

Dawn Lianna

Dawn Lianna is an accomplished event manager, educator, and natural health expert with over 30 years of experience in event management, natural healing, and personal coaching. Her client list includes non-profit, community and educational organizations, along with corporations and individuals. As an event manager, she has planned, coordinated, and co-hosted over 500 successful events. She has a deep knowledge of the inner workings of the events space, which she shares with students as the instructor of the Event Management and Design course. She is also the author and instructor of the course, Keys to Effective Communication. Her MA in Counseling and Psychology, along with her status as Certified Hypnotherapist and Certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner, combine in her approach to trust, respect, and rapport in effective conversation. She is an active, certified coach who integrates alternative health practices and her personal studies of herbology, nutrition, positive thinking, intuition development, acupuncture, and massage in her work and her Introduction to Natural Health and Healing course.

Instructor Interaction: The instructor looks forward to interacting with learners in the online moderated discussion area to share their expertise and answer any questions you may have on the course content.

Requirements

Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites to take this course.

Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

This course can be taken on either a PC or Mac.

Software Requirements:

PC: Windows 8 or later.
Mac: macOS 10.6 or later.
Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are preferred. Microsoft Edge and Safari are also compatible.
Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.

Other:

Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.

Instructional Material Requirements:

The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.

FAQ

Instructor-Moderated: A new session of each course begins each month. Please refer to the session start dates for scheduling.

Self-Guided: Your course begins immediately after you enroll.

Instructor-Moderated: Once a course session starts, two lessons will be released each week for the 6 week duration of your course. You will have access to all previously released lessons until the course ends. You will interact with the instructor through the online discussion area. There are no live sessions or online meetings with the instructor.

Self-Guided: You have 3 months of access to the course. After enrolling, you can learn and complete the course at your own pace, within the allotted access period. You will have the opportunity to interact with other students in the online discussion area.

Instructor-Moderated: The interactive discussion area for each lesson automatically closes two weeks after each lesson is released, so you're encouraged to complete each lesson within two weeks of its release. However, you will have access to all lessons from the time they are released until the course ends.

Self-Guided: There is no time limit to complete each lesson, other than completing all lessons within the allotted access period. Discussion areas for each lesson are open for the entire duration of the course.

Instructor-Moderated: Students enrolled in a six-week online class benefit from a one-time, 10-day extension for each course. No further extensions can be provided beyond these 10 days.

Self-Guided: Because this course is self-guided, no extensions will be granted after the start of your enrollment.

Reviews

I value the skills shared and will be more purposeful, present, and ask more open ended questions. Thank you! I really enjoyed this course. I have recommended this course to a couple of colleagues and I hope they are able to sign up. The tools shared are valuable. I valued taking time over the past 6 weeks to reflect on past experiences and to discover new strategies to improve and open up communication with challenging people. It has made difference! Highly recommend this course.

I enjoyed the material and all the information that this course presented. It is very helpful in daily life encounter and especially beneficial in the corporate culture.

I enjoyed this course very much.I notice a change at work and with my family. I would recommend this course to everyone.

I found the class very interesting and it gave me some insight on looking at other people when there is conflict between us. It helps to take some of the feelings away to know we have different backgrounds and different ways of doing things.

I found the course to be very informative and helpful for my present situations and future dealings with people. Thank you!!

I found this course to be very interesting and gave me a great insight into other people's behaviour as well as my own. I especially found the links to other websites and articles very useful.

I gained some very valuable information and have made a binder to keep my lessons and use for a future resource.

I really enjoyed this class! It opened a new world of understanding family members and friends. I know I'll be much more thoughtful in the future! Thanks for your help!!!

This was an excellent course and I would highly recommend it...The materials are great and I know I will be referring back to these again and again. I was surprised to learn so much about myself in the process and this course will help me improve my interpersonal skills and relationships. Thank you so much for all of the hard work you put into this course.