In this video, business and mindset career coach Natalie Fisher shares a personal story about a perfectionist coworker who constantly nitpicks minor details, which initially caused her irritation. She explains how she transformed her reaction by shifting her perspective: instead of viewing the coworker as a nuisance, she became curious about the coworker's motivations and asked questions to understand her mindset. Fisher then outlines a practical framework for handling difficult people at work. She encourages viewers to (1) assess how they are currently showing up in the situation, (2) decide the type of person they want to be, and (3) deliberately choose thoughts that serve that desired self‑image. She stresses that we cannot control others, only our own thoughts, emotions, and behavior, and that focusing on the desired results of a project should outweigh personal feelings toward a difficult colleague. The video concludes with a brief promotion of her free workshop and coaching services, inviting viewers to apply the presented mindset tools to broader career challenges.
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All right, in this video we're gonna talk about how to deal with difficult people at work. So if you have difficult people that you work with, you're gonna love this video, so stay tuned. So first off, I'd like to start with an example of a difficult person that I work with. I'm not gonna say her name because I don't know if she's gonna watch this. So first of all, I'm gonna tell you Little story about this lady. When I was doing office admin work, I would be in charge of, you know, keeping the kitchen stocked and doing everything that was required to keep the office running. And, you know, all the stuff that is reception kind of stuff, but just basically everything, right? So we had this new lady come to work at the office, and she was very, very vigilant and very perfectionist with everything that that happened in the office. She would be right about a lot of things. So because I was dealing with a lot of HR stuff as well, sometimes I wouldn't be super on top of everything, and she would point things out, and I would be like, yep, totally right, totally gonna make sure that gets done. I'm gonna either assign it to someone or I will get it done myself. But that came to the point where she was just nitpicking about little things that really didn't matter, and I started to get really, really irritated by it. So one of the things was she was like, She tapped me on the shoulder. She's like, "Hey Natalie, come with me." When I was at my desk working, she's like, "Hey, I need to show you something. This is really important." I'm like, "Okay." So I got up. I went with her. She takes me to the kitchen, opens up the fridge, and she says, "Hey, I noticed that you placed these soy milk containers in, and they are the wrong way round. And what happens when they're the wrong way round is that you could get spillage." And then, you know, then she went on to describe to me what a horrible catastrophe might happen because the soy milk containers were put— were placed wrong in the fridge. She took me away from my work to show me this. So I was like, okay, you could be right about that. But in my head, I'm just like, seriously? And I was getting really irritated by it. Okay, so several of these things would happen, long story short, and I let it bother me on a daily basis. So instead of thinking to myself, oh my God, she's driving me nuts, she could do my job better, like I was thinking all these thoughts that were really driving me crazy, I decided to shift it to how is it that her brain works? Why does she think this is so important? And so I started asking her a bunch of questions and she would just answer the questions. And so I got a better understanding of how her brain worked. And now instead of being like, oh, she's so annoying, I'm like, she's so interesting, her brain works in such an interesting way. That was a way that helped me to change how I was reacting, and we have a much better relationship now and everything is fine. And so then what I want to give to you is give yourself some criteria that you'd like to live up to. So in the situation where you're dealing with a difficult person, are you happy with how you are showing up? So for me, I was not happy. I did not want to be that person who was irritated all the time. So I changed my thoughts around it and was able to show up in a different way. Now, now I'm just curious. About it, right? And I'm amused by it. I'm like, yeah, that's funny that you think these things are so important. Like, why? I'm showing up in a better way. I'm happier around the situation, and I'm not suffering. Whereas before, I was like, this is so annoying. That's something you can give to yourself is just give yourself some criteria. Ask yourself, how do you want to show up? Because you cannot control this person. They are who they are. They're going to act how they're going to act. You can't do anything about that. How do you want to show up? in the face of this situation? And are you happy? And if you're not, if you want to show up differently, then ask yourself, how would you have to think to show up differently? So basically, what type of person do you want to be in this situation? Because that's the only thing you can control. So when you realize this, you can't control any other people's thoughts or feelings or emotions. You can't control how they feel about you or what they think about you. And I'm sure that you already know that. But once you just, you know, bring yourself back to that, you can control what you choose to think and whether it serves you or not. And if you're showing up in a way that you're not happy with, or you're not proud of, then your thinking thoughts are not serving you. You can become aware of them. And you'll know they're not serving you if they're making you feel irritated, angry, like you don't want to go to work, like you don't want to talk to them. Those feelings, those thoughts are going to make you feel emotions that are not very satisfying and not very nice, right? So you could change those thoughts to, I wonder what that person's motivation is. Why is that so important to them? Why are they behaving like this? Maybe I'll just ask them a few questions. Or, ha, that's really funny. Why are they doing that? Or, yeah, that's just how that person is. They just overreact sometimes. Just some examples there of how you can turn it around. And everything that you can do is in your control, right? The things that you can do are what you're thinking, how you're showing up and who you are being in these situations, because difficult people are going to come along no matter what, right? So it's all about what you do when they come up, right? When you meet them, when you work with them, when you've got to work on a project with them, it's all about who you are being. That's it. Choose to think thoughts that are going to serve you, thoughts that are going to have you showing up as the person you want to be, as someone you'd be proud to work with, and not somebody who is pulling down a situation because of your feelings or your negative emotion. And just keep in mind the results that you want to get. So if you're working on a project with somebody, the results that you want to get are more important than your feelings towards the person, right? Your feelings towards the person can be changed with your thoughts around it. So you can say, you know what, this person thinks this, this person is doing that, but what we really need to focus on is what's important here. What do we need to get done? And how can we do that? And what that person is dealing with right now is going to have to be worked around. Maybe you can find out more information, but what's the end goal here? And if that person's behavior is getting in the way of it, then we need to talk about that. We need to explain to them why their behavior is getting in the way of our result. And if it's not getting in the way of the result, then it's just a personal thing, and you need to work your mind in a way— manage your mind in a way that makes you show up in the way you want to show up. If you don't know me, I'm Natalie Fisher. I'm a business and mindset career coach. I help you get your dream job, get promoted, start an online business, reach goals you really wanna reach and haven't been able to for a while. That's me. I will help you with that. If you'd like more information or you wanna work, talk about working together, I have a free workshop to get you started. And what you're gonna get on the workshop is the 2 main components that lead to success. In any situation. I'm going to walk you through the main coaching tool that I use to solve problems with any of my clients. Bring any problem, we will work through it. I'm going to show you how to apply that in your life. I'm going to show you how the thinking that you've been thinking up until now, the thoughts you've been thinking up until now, have created the results you have now, and how to change those results if you want to, and what your next steps are going to be to get started immediately on the right path in the direction that you want to go in your life. So if you're interested in working with me, check out that workshop below. Get started right away. I hope to see you there. And if you like this video, give me a thumbs up. If you didn't like it, give me a thumbs down and leave me a comment. Don't forget to subscribe, and I will see you in a few days with a new video. Cool. Thanks for watching. Bye. So I hope that made sense. Little story there for me. I have some— lots of experience working with quote-unquote difficult people, and I hope that that helped.
