Dealing With People You Can't Stand [Paperback]

Another strong point of this book are the illustrations of the Lens of Understanding. They are throughout the book and are very helpful. The Lens of Understanding illustrations help you to see the organizational framework. The illustrations are formatted to resemble the cross hairs of a scope on a rifle. They are an effective visual aide.

One of the weak areas are the typographical errors. There are several throughout the book. One example is on page xii. The period after the 2 is missing. Another typo is on page 118, in paragraph three. The word when is spelled ohen.

Another weak aspect is contradiction. For example in the Introduction Dr. Rick & Dr. Rick tell you that the difficult person will change. Their statement "While you can't change difficult people, you can communicate with them in such a way that they change themselves. It's a matter of knowing how to get through to them when they're behaving badly.", contradicts itself in several places throughout the book. The authors tell you that you better adjust your attitude. One example of this is on page 68. The heading is in bold lettering and states "You Better Adjust Your Attitude." They tell you to watch your emotions when dealing with a Tank.

On page 201, Dr. Rick & Dr. Rick give more contradicting advice. In the seventh ounce of prevention, they tell you to beware of multitasking when on the telephone. Then in the eighth
ounce of prevention they tell you to use your phone time to catch up on personal hygiene.

Errors and contradictions aside this book helped me to have a better insight to what makes some people tick.
This helps me communicate more effectively, thus taking some of the stress out of my life.

From the very beginning the doctors failed to engage me, they did not give me a reason to care to use these strategies on very many people. Given their backgrounds in holistic healing and naturopathic medicine, it would seem logical that they would have informed us of the health benefits enjoyed by eliminating stressful people from our lives. Instead this reader found it difficult to relate to any of the proposed situations in anything more than a professional setting. Because of that, this book would make an excellent blueprint on how to manipulate people on your way up the ladder of success.

Each chapter was well organized, most beginning with a story that depicted that particular chapters theme. The authors then laid out a step-by-step guide to dealing with this type of difficult individual. It seems a bit naïve to think that one strategy will work for each of the personality types. Some may find it difficult to proceed with the given advice, and therefore it would have been nice to see some alternative strategies given. This would give the reader greater flexibility when dealing with his or her particular difficult person. Not only were the suggestions limited, often times they seemed quite simplistic, almost as though Brinkman and Kirschner believe that people are machines and simply by pushing the right buttons or saying the magic pop psychology phrase we can control anyone. Seldom does it work that way in real life. This tendency is clearly seen in the stories at the end of each chapter. Again Brinkman and Kirschner introduce us to some people in conflict. One character is a difficult person and the other employs the strategies spelled out by the authors. After the techniques are used, it is almost like magic that the difficult person begins to cooperate. Now this would be acceptable as a way to make your point, but often we are led to believe that each story is a recount of a real-life occurrence. So, unless the authors have found a real life magic bullet, they have lost a lot of credibility with this reader.

Another reason to look upon this book with suspicion is the fact that the authors apparently want us to believe that all of these ideas were somehow conceived, developed and born of their own brilliant minds. On only two occasions do the refer us to any other sources for the theories put forth in this book, and one of those is another book written by the same men. A book of this type should be able to direct us to other sources to back up the theories presented.

As stated earlier, this book is an excellent source for those who wish to manipulate co-workers and business associates, especially the first two-thirds of it. Towards the end though it does become a bit more personal and even more enjoyable to read. The last section of the book is certainly the freshest. Here we get some good advice on proper use and etiquette on the phone and using E-mail.