Feb 16, 2018 ● Eric Titner
How to recognize "high conflict people" in your work life
Is there a high conflict person in your orbit who seems to be intent on making your work life more difficult? Yes, these ultra-high maintenance and difficult people have become so prevalent in all areas of life—from personal to professional and everything in between—that they’ve been given their own nickname: HCPs. If one or several of these folks have found their way into your world, then you know how lousy it can be. But this doesn’t mean that you need to give up or surrender your happiness to a high conflict person. There are things you can do to help prevent HCPs from ruining your life.
Psychology Today recently discussed the growing HCP phenomena in a recent article by Bill Eddy, LCSW, JD: “HCPs can look and act great when you get to know them, but sooner or later their hostility, mood swings and blaming behavior can be targeted on you—you become their 'Target of Blame'. They may or may not have personality disorders. But they lack insight and rarely change. Unfortunately, the skills that help us deal with ordinary people rely on reason and self-control, two areas where HCPs have a great deal of difficulty. We need to use different skills for managing our relationships with them, or avoiding them.”
Many of us figure out various methods for individually handling HCPs we encounter in our lives—we take stock of the person, their personality, their strengths and weaknesses, and just naturally get a feel for how to best deal with (or avoid) that person. It’s just a natural part of life—as we go through various career experiences we’ll invariably have opportunities to interact with a wide array of people, some of whom we’ll get along with and others we might not, and it’s in our best interest to figure out how to make the best out of every interaction.
True, HCPs can pose special challenges—they can be extremely difficult personalities to figure out how to deal with, especially when we encounter them in high-stakes environments such as the workplace, but if you encounter an HCP and may have to interact with one on a regular basis there is a way forward.
Eddy has outlined a proven method for dealing with HCPs, which they have termed the CARS method. This method consists of the following four skill areas: “Connecting with empathy, attention, and respect; Analyzing your options; Responding to hostility or misinformation; and Setting limits on high-conflict behavior. Such a method is often the opposite of what you feel like doing, but we have found that it works over and over again in calming HCPs, focusing them on their future choices (rather than arguing about the past), matter-of-factly correcting their frequent misinformation and setting limits because HCPs don’t stop themselves.”
You may be naturally doing some variation of the CARS method or some of its components when dealing with HCPs in your life. Let’s take a closer look at how Eddy breaks down each component of the CARS method, for maximum success in any tricky HCP situation.