Dealing with Difficult People

Seeing All Beings as the Buddha

How Do Mindful People Deal with Jerks?

As a result of our own lies and gossip we face bad workers and mean people. Whether it’s our students, our helpers, or our employees, they argue with us. They disagree without even paying attention to us. They pretend not to understand until we repeat things two or three times; then they get angry with our tone and talk back and take their own sweet time to do the work. When they finally finish, they don’t get around to telling us, and they continue to be spiteful and angry.

—Dzogchen Kunzan Lama 83

HOW DOES THIS horrible situation happen to us? Why is the world so unfair?

The Buddha’s answer turns the tables on you. You want to know the reason why everyone is treating you so badly? It’s because you started it long before. Everyone knows the saying “What goes around comes around.” It doesn’t apply just to others; it applies to you. It was your own hostility, your own duplicity, that began the cycle that led to your current situation. (We know … this isn’t the answer you wanted to hear.)

Perhaps you don’t even remember how it began. Perhaps you think you never treated these people badly. Perhaps you are even right about that. But can you honestly say that you’ve never lied in a work situation? Can you claim that you have never gossiped about someone and said things that were hurtful? We didn’t think so. There are no innocents among us. People are jerks to us because at some time or other we have been jerks to others. Other people are mirrors of ourselves.

Okay, so the Buddha tells you why you’re faced with these bad relationships. Now what to do about them? It is very simple and also very difficult. You began this cycle of negativity; you are going to have to end it. When you face anger, show compassion. When you encounter inattention, attend to what those people are really thinking. When you wait through delays, maintain mindfulness of your reactions to those annoyances. When you receive no thanks, remember your reward is precisely in that lesson.

Not so easy. Yes, we’re with you. But it’s not forever, and by staying mindful, you may dramatically change your future path. Dealing with a jerk may be perfect preparation for the next steps in your career—we never know whether and how something painful might turn out to be a blessing later. Don’t give in to your anger or that of others; just keep your mouth shut and, without even knowing why, take responsibility. That is the bodhisattva path.

How Should You Deal with Coworkers Who Lie?

Animals express their true feelings in their cries.
Only humans are smart enough to hide the truth.

—Jatakamala 22.19

THE HUMAN CAPACITY for self-awareness is both our blessing and our curse. We feel, and yet we have the capacity to stand outside ourselves, to feel ourselves feeling something, and to choose whether or not to let others know. In other words, we always have the choice to express our thoughts and feelings or to express something different.

This ability to dissemble causes a lot of trouble at work. People lie at work when they feel they must hide the truth. They may think that if they disagree with the boss, it will hurt their career. If they point out the weakness in a business idea, they’ll be branded as “not a team player.” Such beliefs teach us to lie. We end up with whole organizations full of people lying to one another. Hard to be mindful and awake if you have to lie about what you see and think.

The Buddha would be compassionate about all this lying. He knows that coworkers who lie are not bad people; they have just lived in an environment of lying for so long that they’re blind to how much it harms them. People often have blind spots that prevent them from seeing how self-destructive their own actions are.

The Buddha would encourage leaders to transform their organizations by rewarding people for telling the truth, no matter how bitter, and by not rewarding lies, no matter how sweet. He would tell workers not to sell their integrity for a paycheck. No paycheck is worth that price. The Buddha would invite all of us to emulate the clarity of animals—to say what we mean and mean what we say.

How Do You Handle People Pleasers?

A sycophant is an enemy pretending to be a friend in four phases: he agrees with whatever you did in the past; he agrees with all your plans for the future; he makes empty promises to gain favor; then—when he can actually do something—he says he just can’t.

—Digha Nikaya 31

MOST OF US have met charmers like this at work. They are so eager to curry favor, they are so desperate to be liked, that they will flatter you, agree with you, say just about anything to please you. After enough time, you realize that, unfortunately, you can’t believe a thing they say—neither about what you’ve done nor about what they will do for you.

This is a crucial lesson, because you cannot have your own work, or your team’s, undermined by the false expectations that sycophants create. If others tell you only what they think you want to hear, you’re not getting the whole story, and their misinformation can easily trip you up. Do not base your decisions or actions on the input from people pleasers.

This is especially true for business owners, executives, and managers. A smart boss in a healthy organization trains his followers to tell him the truth, no matter what. An emotionally mature leader makes it safe for his staff to disagree with him, to express alternative points of view, even to argue with him, if they feel strongly that their boss is mistaken.

Your real friend is the one who gives you authentic, accurate feedback—both positive and negative. She is your teacher, and your entire organization should be grateful to her. And when it comes to yourself, emulate her, not the sycophant.

How Should You Respond If Someone Bad-Mouths You?

A bad person who slanders a good one is like a person who looks up and spits at heaven. His spit never reaches the sky; it falls back into his own face.

—Sutra of Forty-two Sections 8

WHEN SOMEONE IS trashing you, it is often hard to remember that in the long run, this is going to come back and hurt the person doing the trashing. The Buddha helps you to keep the proper perspective. Perhaps you wish the trash talker would get his comeuppance as fast as the person who spits at heaven. Stop wasting your time with these thoughts.

The Buddha’s simile tells us another crucial thing about this situation. When you are bad-mouthed, you are like heaven in the simile. Does heaven spit back at the bad-mouther? No. It is the bad-mouther’s own bile that comes back at him. It is the same when someone bad-mouths you. Do not respond in kind. Do not sink to that level. Let gravity simply take its course and the bad words find their way home. No effort is required; this is just the way of things.

The Buddha is in a good position to know this—he was constantly getting slandered by jealous religious figures. He just let it be. Things turned out pretty well for him, didn’t they? (And, hey, you don’t have to rise to the celestial purity of the Buddha; you just have to stay out of spitting range.)

How Do Buddhas Deal with Anger?

“He insulted me, he beat me, robbed me!”
Think this way and hatred never ends.
“He insulted me, he beat me, robbed me!”
Give this up and in you hatred ends.
Not by hate is hate defeated; hate is
Quenched by love. This is eternal law.

—Dhammapada 3–5

CONFLICT IS A fact of organizational life. Following their desires and attachments, people are bound to hurt one another in the course of working together. But conflict’s naturalness doesn’t mean that we should let it continue.

So how should we handle workplace hurts and conflicts? We naturally want to respond in kind when others are hostile toward us, but the Buddha tells us to resist this inclination. Other people’s hostility often has nothing to do with us—they are just acting out their own karma. If we meet others’ anger with our own anger, joining in their negative karma, we are simply adding fuel to the fire, endangering everyone, including ourselves.

Instead, the Buddha counsels us to take the high road—to respond to others’ hostility with compassion and forgiveness. Wise teachers throughout the ages have echoed the Buddha’s wisdom: Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and so many others in other cultures. The soothing balm of unconditional love and understanding is the only thing that calms hostility in others.

Is this a tall order? Of course it is. We are human, after all, and the Buddha knows this. But harboring a resentment because someone else hurt us is like swallowing poison and hoping the other person will die. And acting vengefully, taking an eye for an eye, only leads us to the kingdom of the blind. We must forgive and let go of revenge—otherwise we become prisoners of our own anger. Quench your hate in the waters of love. It’s a slow business, but a sweet one.

What Would the Buddha Caution about Adulterous Affairs at Work?

Four things for one who beds another’s wife:
Loss, unrest, censure, and finally hell.

—Dhammapada 309

THE BUDDHA WOULD say the same thing about sexual affairs whether they happen at work or someplace else: adulterous affairs are costly to the illicit lovers. The text above outlines what will happen to the male partner; we can assume that the female partner will pay a similar price. Note that we’re not talking about single people, free to find intimacy where they can. We are talking about adultery here.

First, the lovers will immediately feel degraded and will lose the respect of those who know about the affair. Second, the lovers will lose sleep because of their guilty consciences and their worry about being found out by their spouses and everyone else. Third, the lovers may very well be censured. It is not uncommon that one partner or the other may be forced to resign if the affair becomes a matter of public knowledge and the boss (or the human resources department) finds out about it. Adulterous affairs are costly to an organization in terms of gossip, morale, attention, and productivity, and smart managers and executives act quickly to discipline the illicit lovers.

Finally, the lovers will pay the price of hell. Not necessarily hell of the fire and brimstone kind, ruled by the red guy with tail and horns, but the hell of being trapped by desire, attachment, deception, lying, broken vows, and more. Hell is where we live when we spite the path of awakening and choose instead to be slaves to our desires.

The Buddha would mince no words in counseling adulterers about the cost of their extramarital affair. His own censure would be compassionate, but there’s not much he’d be able to do to save these lovers from the results of their own actions.

How Should I Respond to Whiners and Negative People?

Don’t stay with friends who cheat or do what’s base.
Stay with noble friends; stay with the best.

—Dhammapada 78

THE BUDDHA DOESN’T mince words with his advice: avoid whiners, chronic complainers, and any other negative people. Avoid them like the plague. Why? Because it’s contagious. Just as a drunk wants you drunk, too, if you’re going to be around him, so whiners want you to join in their whining. It’s easy to get sucked into the negative energy of negative people—we all have frustrations and complaints about work, and sometimes it even seems like fun to join in the pile-on of cynicism and anger. But don’t do it. Resist the pack mentality that transforms these negative people into jackals. Run away if you must.

Instead, seek out positive people at work. Look for people who are up to something good and hang out with them. Make a list of the five or ten most admired people where you work and see if you can find ways to spend some time with them. Remember: they too want to spend time with sincere people; that means you. At the very least, watch them from a distance and see what you can learn from them.

Associate with honest people, good people, people who are good at their jobs. If you want a good future, hang out with the best. Why? Because that’s contagious, too.

What Should I Do If I Have a Conflict with a Teammate?

When conflict arises in your own family, don’t blame others. Instead, look for the cause in your own mind and action and pursue the solution there.

—Anguttara Nikaya 3.31

PEACE WITHIN A team, like peace within a family, is vital to the well-being of both individuals and the group. Blaming someone else does no good at all—in fact, it makes things worse. If you think the problem lies in someone else, then the solution must lie there as well. There’s nothing you can do; you’re powerless. This is no way to be. Instead, if you own the problem, then you begin to own the solution. You will think of what you can do to make things better (no matter what the other person is doing).

When team conflict arises, ask yourself, “How have I contributed to this situation?” You know it takes two to tango; it’s doubtful that you are ever simply an innocent victim. (And if somehow you are an innocent victim, drop that role now. Own the problem and empower yourself to end it.) Look for what you can do to contribute to a solution. Victims assign blame; winners make things better. In the end, would you rather be the one who’s morally right or the one who’s fixed the problem? (Hint: which one do you think your company prefers?)