Handling Opinions and Difficult Personalities

There is no one simple solution to dealing with difficult participants or difficult behavior. It is usually a matter of thinking on your feet and doing the best that you can in that situation.

But when you’re trying your best to deal with a participant who’s being “difficult”, then you must remember that your main objectives are to minimize the behavior, while maintaining the self-esteem of the individual participant.

Always Be Politically Correct

Whether you are dealing with a tough participant or not, you have to depersonalize your responses. This simply means to avoid stereotyping or off-color humor.

Be careful to not use language or behave in a way that could offend a group of people. Also, strictly avoid any discussion of politics or religion. These two topics have no place in the training environment.

Challenging situations usually start with difficult questions.

Why might they be difficult? We might not know the answer. The question might be someone challenging our knowledge. Or, a question could be someone wanting the spotlight or showing off.

Be prepared to adapt quickly to unexpected situations by planning how you’ll approach common distractions.

For example, a trainer discussing sensitive topics such as harassment in the workplace could plan several responses to crude or inappropriate comments.