Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Book Review: Coping with Difficult People

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Book Title: Coping with Difficult People

Author: Robert M. Bramson

Off-Amazon page that represents the author: http://www.mindperk.com/Bramson.htm

Publisher: Dell

Date: 1981

Length: 216 pages plus index

ISBN: 0440202019

Quote: "As a management consultant I have found that most of my clients spend more time talking about how to cope with problem employees, bosses, customers, and co-workers than about anything else."

Robert Bramson's strategies for coping with these people are pretty much common sense, and aren't always practicable, but they're useful as far as they go. He describes the strategy of standing up to hostile aggressive people while staying friends, recommends calling people out on sneaky verbal attacks ("That sounded like an attack; did you mean it that way?"), suggests giving "exploders" time to run down, advises trying to move chronic complainers into problem-solving mode, warns readers of the problems they're likely to have with "super-agreeable" people, and so on.

My opinion is that it's more helpful to work with strategies that identify and label behavior rather than people, so better books exist...but this one's okay in its way. If you click here to buy it from me, you pay $5 for the book, $5 for shipping, and out of that I send Bramson $1, and you get the privilege of posting a review here with live links to a book, web site, or business of your choice. If you physically buy it from Mountain Treasures in Gate City, Virginia, you pay much less than you'd pay even if you bought it for a penny plus shipping on Amazon, and you support a respectable charity. If you buy it from Amazon, I have no idea what good things the profits may or may not do, but you may get a fair price without being anywhere near Gate City.

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