Dealing With Difficult People: Drama Queens
We've all had to work with drama queens and drama kings, and dealing with difficult people can be incredibly frustrating. But there is a very simple way to calm down drama queens and kings. Four simple words: “Just the facts please.”
Here's a dirty little secret that falls under the heading of communication skills: Flattery actually does work. It is effective. Saying nice things to people is a really good way to build relationships (it's not the only way, but it is a helpful tool). Great sales people know this. 
One question I get a lot is how many interview questions to ask when you're interviewing candidates. Five to six is about the right number, assuming your interview is about an hour long. 60 minutes is the median time that most interviews go right now. If you can do longer than that, great, that's super, but most people do about an hour-long interview.
Let's say you just got promoted to manager and one of your former co-workers, former colleagues, is pretty ticked off because you got the promotion and they didn't. How do you deal with this? It takes developing some interpersonal skills.
Getting criticized stinks. I'm not going to sugarcoat that. But there is a technique you can use to receive constructive criticism that makes it a little more bearable, and even constructive.
One of the worst management techniques ever created is the Compliment Sandwich. The Compliment Sandwich was created as a way of giving somebody constructive criticism:
"Bob, you're just so talented. You're so smart. You might be the smartest person in the department. Your behavior...
Ever since I wrote the book HARD Goals, which is about goal setting, I've gotten a bit of a reputation as a guy who hates SMART goals. I think it's maybe a touch unfair, but let me tell you where it comes from. We did a study to look at goal setting involving over 4,000 people. . .
Manager For A Day Program Teaches Leadership Skills Succession planning is kind of a weird topic for a lot of leaders. Succession planning, theoretically, is super easy to do. Okay, we just have to find the next group of leaders who are going to replace the current group of leaders as they succeed and get them the right leadership skills, et cetera, et cetera.
Interview questions and answers are critical to hiring success, and one thing we want to be careful of when we’re talking about interview questions and answers is not hiring people who say the words “always” and “never” a lot. Here's why. 
Here’s a different kind of communication skills tip: If you give enough presentations, eventually you will have one not go well. You will have one go off the rails. Now, when most people do this, they have this feeling that I just have to power through no matter how bad this is, no matter how much sweat is pouring down my back, and how irritated and annoyed the audience is.
