Themes discussed in this episode

• Protecting your emotional regulation when dealing with difficult people
• Using compassion and kindness as professional tools (not weaknesses)
• Becoming “emotional Teflon” and not absorbing other people’s chaos
• Setting boundaries while staying calm, grounded, and professional

Episode Highlights

Time-stamped inflection points from the show

00:12 – Lori explains why this episode isn’t about fixing difficult people, but about protecting your emotional stability and dignity at work and in life.

01:42 – Reframing the “villain”: Lori shares a client story that illustrates how kindness and professionalism can change difficult dynamics over time.

04:53 – Why kindness is a superpower, and how compassion helps you perform better in business and leadership situations.

06:52 – Becoming “emotional Teflon”: learning to armor up emotionally, stay regulated under pressure, and stop absorbing other people’s chaos.

11:00 – How to be kind without breaking boundaries, why compassion doesn’t mean tolerating abuse, and when it’s appropriate to disengage or escalate.

Top Quotes

01:08 – “They can make you hate your job. They can make you not want to go into work. They can make you get anxious the night before you know you have a morning meeting with them. But this episode isn’t about fixing that person. It’s about protecting you and walking away with your emotions nice and steady, no disruption, no triggering. You keep your dignity.”

04:53 – “Because kindness is a superpower. Remember that it is a superpower. It’s something that you can pull out and use in just about any situation when you have an angry customer. Kindness. It works.”

05:16 – “Try to learn how to become emotional Teflon. And what that means is, when you see somebody roll their eyes, get a tone, make a passive aggressive comment, I don’t care. They don’t threaten me. And if it makes them feel more in control, or if they’re annoyed by the fact that maybe I didn’t recall the email I got three weeks ago, go ahead and be annoyed. It’s totally okay.”

12:06 – “You can be generous and still unavailable for nonsense. You don’t have to be tolerant of abuse. So you talk about what you do, you talk about what you need from them, and when you’ll disengage.”

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Transcript

00:12
Hello. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Work Mom Says Don’t Be an Idiot. Today we are going to be talking about dealing with difficult people. We all have to do it. You may have a difficult person in your family, you may be working for a difficult boss, and you may have a great job, but your coworker drives you crazy because they’re just crabby all the time.

Here is how you deal with that, and I would actually consider that in those cases, you may be the only adult in the room who knows how to act like a mature human being, and that’s reality. There are a lot of emotionally immature people running companies in high-level positions because they’re really smart, but they may not have very high EQ, emotional intelligence, and that’s what we talk about here at Work Mom Says.

So basically, we all know that person. You’ve got them. They can make you hate your job. They can make you not want to go into work. They can make you get anxious the night before you know you have a morning meeting with them. But this episode isn’t about fixing that person. It’s about protecting you and walking away with your emotions nice and steady, no disruption, no triggering. You keep your dignity. You perform at the level that you know you can perform emotionally, and this also works in your personal relationships. So let’s not forget that.

01:42
So first things first, one of the things that I think is really, really important to do and kind of easy is to reframe the villain, whoever it is. I’m going to tell you about a client that I had that, I mean, she would bark at me on the phone. I’d call her, or she’d call me, and I’d say hello, and it would be “mamma, mamma, mamma,” you know, bark, bark, bark.

And I really think that she thought she had to be aggressive to be effective and that nobody respected her. She was really introverted, so I’m sure it was difficult for her to call us in the first place. And at that point, I actually shared an office with a young woman. We worked together in sales and account management in this video studio.

So we would get this call from this client and, oh my God, it was just like, wow, that was a tough one because she was so aggressive. And if someone has been rewarded for their bad behavior, like maybe this person that we were dealing with was constantly being, you know, treated poorly by her coworkers or her boss, she just decided she was going to vent it on somebody else, and we happened to be the closest, easiest subject for that venting.

And if it’s worked for her, then why wouldn’t she keep doing it? The problem was that we did not like dealing with it. We, myself and my office mate, didn’t like it. And so we started talking about how we could make it better. And so we decided to be overtly kind, not fake.

03:18
We didn’t give in to requests that were not good or that cost the company money, but we were always calm, always professional, always, “How are you?”

And I remember one time the power of kindness was really, really obvious when she actually started telling me that she had to stay home that day and was waiting for a new couch to show up, and she started telling me all about it. And I thought, wow, this is really unusual because she never told us anything personal before.

But after a few months of our approach being overtly kind, giving her what we thought she needed, which was somebody to take care of her and be polite, she responded to that. And she actually got to the point where she would come to our parties. It was wild to watch the transformation.

04:08
And so one of the things to remember is if you are generally a compassionate person, you will do better in business. If you don’t think you’re compassionate, go look it up. Find out how you can become more compassionate, because compassionate people do better in business.

We are able to put ourselves in other people’s places. And all I could think of when she would call and bark at us was that she’s just not very happy. So maybe if some people are nice to her, she’ll be a little happier.

I know it sounds manipulative because we were trying to be nice to her so that she would be nice to us, and we knew we were going to have to work with her a lot. She was a production manager at an agency that was a long-time client. We dealt with it, we figured it out, and it worked. Because kindness is a superpower.

04:53
Remember that it is a superpower. It’s something that you can pull out and use in just about any situation when you have an angry customer. Kindness. It works.

So one of the things that I also tell people, and I highly suggest you maybe put this on a board if you’re a sensitive person, put it up in your office or on your computer. I have little Post-it notes on my computer. Try to learn how to become emotional Teflon.

And what that means is when you see somebody roll their eyes, get a tone, make a passive-aggressive comment. I mean, I’ve got clients that do this. As I told you, if you’re like, “Oh God, I’m sorry, I know you told me, but I forgot,” or “in that email I sent you three weeks ago,” and I’m like, I’ve gotten 3,800 emails in the last three weeks. Let me go look it up so I know exactly what we’re talking about.

But those kinds of little slights and backhanded comments, I don’t care. They don’t threaten me. And if it makes them feel more in control, or if they’re annoyed by the fact that maybe I didn’t recall the email I got three weeks ago, go ahead and be annoyed. It’s totally okay. I get it.

I probably should have had those all lined up. I do the best I can. I’m a little ADHD, so I’m not always perfect, and I give myself grace for that. And so when you can become emotional Teflon and not let those little things bother you, you will learn how to stay regulated under pressure, which is always important.

If you’re in an emergency situation at home, staying regulated could be important to somebody staying safe, right? Don’t absorb other people’s chaos. If somebody calls you when they’re in a huge upset, you don’t have to go there with them. And the kinds of things that you learn to be able to handle people at work will serve you in your personal life as well. I can tell you, it really does help.

06:52
So becoming emotional Teflon means that you always look at the logical side of the situation before you look at the emotional side, and I will own that sometimes means putting on some armor.

I had a particular client that I’ve worked with now for about a year and a half, and there’s a tone that this person uses in their voice. And a lot of people, over the last year and a half, I have found out, don’t like that tone. Well, neither do I, but I was taking it very personally.

And so when I realized I needed to get my emotional Teflon back, I looked at it as armoring up. The tone that was used had nothing to do with me. It was just that person. And now we have a great relationship. It’s not a bad relationship, because I just let those tones and backhanded comments roll off.

They’re just noise. They are not something that’s threatening me. It’s not something that’s causing me physical pain. It’s not causing me to lose my job. I know I’m doing a good job. It’s just noise. And if you can look at it that way, again, you’re going to be better off in the long run, both at work and at home.

08:22
Last one for today is build your compassion muscle. Some people never learned how to ask for something without being demanding, how to express frustration in a logical way, so when they do, it’s attacking.

They don’t know how to trust that someone’s actually listening to them. Maybe they feel disrespected. Maybe they’re dismissive and don’t realize it. Maybe defense is just their natural trauma response, and so they always come across in a way that is difficult for others.

That doesn’t mean it’s personal. You can look at that person and say, oh man, wouldn’t it be horrible if I never learned how to behave like an adult? And you can actually be compassionate for that person and just hear what they need and ignore the rest.

They haven’t learned. They haven’t built those emotional skills that you have and aren’t able to be more kind in asking for what they need or resolving a problem. Some people think, “If I’m not a jerk, I won’t get what I need out of this situation.” And they may feel that way everywhere. Like nobody gives me what I want. Okay. Well, let me see if I can help you.

09:41
So what I typically do in those situations, especially with customers and coworkers, is to quietly focus on taking care of what they need, not responding to any of the rude comments or questions that are digging too deep.

I may say, “Let’s just focus on getting this managed. We can dig into the why later, but right now we’re in an emergency state.” Let’s just get this done. Then meet that request cleanly and efficiently, and follow up with either a phone call or a thank-you note to say, “Hey, I’m hoping everything is good. I’m glad this was resolved, and I’ll get back to you with what we’re going to do so it doesn’t happen in the future.”

You want to treat those emergency situations with calm, focus on the solution, and then follow up afterward to figure out the why. And the reason that works is because it disrupts the script of the complainer. If you are focused on the solution, it keeps people from whining and complaining. It breaks that pattern.

11:00
So be kind, but that doesn’t mean you have to break every boundary. You can still have boundaries. Be calm, but that doesn’t mean that you’re weak.

Sometimes you have to stand up and say, “No, I’m sorry. I can’t do that, but I can do this instead.” Compassion doesn’t mean you’re a doormat. If somebody’s really beaten up on you and they’re not responding to any of the things I’ve talked about here, that may be the time where you say, “Excuse me, I’m going to have you talk to my boss,” or “I’m going to have you talk to someone else.”

Anybody who is abusive gets sent packing. You should not be subject to that in the workplace at all.

12:05
So remember, you can be generous and still unavailable for nonsense. You don’t have to tolerate abuse.

You never win by matching energy. You never win by going to that same negative, ugly place. You win by staying grounded, regulated, and in control. You’re thinking strategically. Your emotions are way back there.

13:08
That’s why I talk about armor. You might want to armor up so your emotions are not impacted by what’s happening.

Don’t look at the nasty part of what the person is doing. Look at what they need to move along. Not how they need to be defeated, but how they need to be handled. How can I manage this situation to get this person to move along, either to somebody else or to a happy ending that solves the problem they had?

If you remember this, you will definitely be able to handle difficult people with finesse. Be kind, be calm, be unbothered. Be the adult in the room. Sometimes that’s your job. And if you get good at that, trust me, you’ll be invited into a lot more rooms.

13:58
So that’s what I’ve got for you today. If you are watching this on YouTube, please do me a favor and subscribe to my channel. Maybe like this video and share it with your audience.

I’m here to share how to play the emotional contact sport of business so you can experience a whole lot less drama and a whole lot more success. I have a website at workmomsays.com, and I am an open networker on LinkedIn at Lori Jo Vest. Please check in with me there. Just let me know that you’re a listener. I would love to connect with you. Take care, and I’ll be back soon with another episode.

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Who is our ideal listener?

This podcast is for young professionals who want to learn to play the emotional context sport of business and experience less drama and more success.

How can you be more logical and less emotional? Be strategic, and Work Mom Says can help you.

“I tell people to back up, put down the magnifying glass, and look at the big picture when you’re responding to something,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom. “In doing this, you will understand that what’s really upsetting you right now will be something you don’t even remember next week.”

What value can people get from listening to this podcast?

Listening to Work Mom Says can help you grow your mood management skills, grow your ability to reframe situations, and look at things from a strategic point of view. This makes it easier to go into a work situation and get the most positive results.

On Work Mom Says, we also offer tips and tricks for creating connected positive relationships that last over time. People will want you on the team if you can create connected positive relationships and work environments. You become an asset, and you will be more successful when you’re an asset.

“I also like to talk about developing traits like optimism, persistence, tenacity, stick-to-itiveness, sticking with things, and approaching every project with a curious mind instead of a fearful mind,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom

                                                                                                     

Why do I do this? A few more words from Work Mom

I do this because I naturally fell into the Work Mom role when I worked in the ad agency business and had so much fun with it. I also realized I had made just about every mistake there was to make. I don’t hold myself as a stellar example of truth and how you should be. I hold myself out there as someone who has been bruised, battered, and beaten up and learned some important lessons. I’d love to share these lessons with young people, so they don’t have to make those same mistakes or be the idiot I was.

I also want to help young professionals realize that many things our culture prioritizes aren’t really important. We talk a lot about what should be important and how to present your best face at the office so that you can succeed.

I’ve learned so much throughout my career, and it’s gratifying to share that with young professionals and help them avoid some of those mistakes and get to that success sooner.