How To Deal With A Complainer

How To Deal With A Complainer

A Complainer Is Characterized by:

1. Dissatisfaction in their personal life
2. Anger
3. A desire to have their concerns acknowledged
4. Makes demands
5. Wants explanations
6. Makes threats or bluffs
7. Frustration

Description

Complainers have a gripe about everything in their life. This usually comes from the underlying fact that they are unsatisfied or disgruntled about their own personal lives. The complainer has a need for their concerns to be acknowledged. Whether it is in their professional or personal life, the complainer can't have peace of mind until someone listens to and acknowledges their concerns. They feel dissatisfied and they don't just want things to change-they want to be heard and understood.

How to Deal With the Complainer

The key to effectively dealing with a complainer is by using your active listening skills. They want to be heard and acknowledged-not ignored or argued with. You have to use your skills of empathy and try to understand what their interests and needs are.

1. Listen to their concerns. It's not enough sometimes just to fix the problem. The person has a psychological need for someone to acknowledge their concerns. Let them get all of those pent up frustrations out of their system before you address the problem. Listen and acknowledge what they have to say. Encourage them to keep on talking until all those frustrations have been let out.

2. Empathize with them. Imagine yourself walking around in their shoes and see the situation from their perspective. Empathy is an important tool that you can use to facilitate cooperation. Let them know that you understand their situation and make them feel comfortable and important. Use empathetic statements such as, "If I were in your shoes, I'd be really angry too." Paraphrase their concerns back to them. Repeat their concerns back to them in your own words. This lets them know that you have been listening and it allows you to confirm that you have heard and understood everything correctly. Paraphrasing is also a powerful rapport-building tool.

3. Ask them what they would like you to do. In most cases, you will already know what the person wants, but ask them what they would like you to do anyways because it lets them walk away happy by giving them the amount of control they desire.

About The Author

Tristan Loo is an experienced negotiator and an expert in conflict resolution. He uses his law enforcement experience to train others in the prinicples of defusing conflict and reaching agreements. Visit his website at http://www.streetnegotiation.com or e-mail him directly at tristan@streetnegotiation.com

MORE RESOURCES:

RELATED ARTICLES
So Whats Your Argument?
Arguments aren't always bad things. Sometimes They're used to convince someone of an important point they may not yet realize.
Power Pricing - Getting the Right Price for Your Products and Services
There's an old joke about the New York City blackout. Power was out everywhere, and the electric company couldn't figure out what was wrong or how to fix it.
How Barter Can Help Your Business Online or Offline
How Barter Can Help Your BusinessBarter trade is a powerful instrument that represents a solution for companies with available stock or services. By accepting payment in trade money instead of cash, a business maximizes their efficiency by increasing stock turnover or billable hours.
Games are a Reflection of Behavior
You are standing on a small stage yelling, "What's the name of the game?!""Win as much as you can!!!" comes roaring back."Who's responsible for your score?!""I am!!"The audience is composed of ninety men, all prisoners in a federal maximum security prison.
The Art of Negotiation in 535 words
I want to get better at negotiation, but where to start? UK Amazon currently has 2332 books on negotiation. Google indexed nearly 4 million relevant (yeah right) pages.
Cross Cultural Negotiations
Cross cultural negotiation is one of many specialized areas within the wider field of cross cultural communications. By taking cross cultural negotiation training, negotiators and sales personnel give themselves an advantage over competitors.
Are You Scaring Away Potential Customers?
When you are trying to make a sale and ask someone to fill out a credit application and new account form, do your potential customers turn around and run to the competition?Author Michelle Dunn, in her new book "Become the Squeaky Wheel," explains how you can avoid scaring customers away and keep them coming back. First, find out what your competition is doing, do they have a credit policy? If they do, what is included? What does their credit application look like? How many forms do new customers have to fill out? Do they have good paying customers? Look online, a lot of business website will have their credit applications available online.
Negotiation: A Compromising Position
Negotiating is a hot topic these days for a good reason. It is difficult to imagine a more vital managerial skill than the skill of negotiating.
Embarrassed To Discuss Your Prices? Seven Common Reasons We Cant Talk About Them
Last week, a wonderfully-skilled electrician installed a new light fixture for us. He was competent, courteous and efficient.
Barter: Its Not Just for Doctors Anymore
Time was, in the country, the local "doc" was as likely to get paid with a couple of chickens as a couple of dollars. Doctors these days won't stand for that, of course, but while some people have moved completely away from barter and stayed there, others have embraced it wholeheartedly.
How To Communicate Using Space
What Is Proxemics?The study of the communicative aspects of personal space and territory is called proxemics. Everyone is surrounded by an invisible zone of psychological comfort that follows us everywhere we travel.
Making the Deal: Women as Negotiators
Negotiating is no game. It is not for the weak or the fragile.
Dont Be Afraid Of Silence
In any conversation with two or more people, there is a tendency to want to talk all the time to fill any awkward silences or gaps that appear in a conversation.However, if you think of the conversations that you have with your closest friends or family, you will notice that there isn't the same need to fill these gaps, as silences between you are comfortable.
Suppliers as Your Partners in Cost Reduction
This article is one of the many articles still to come in which I will discuss very basic yet proven techniques that you could use immediately in your encounters with your suppliers.Oh but wait, to find any value in this article, you must be a firm believer that Purchasing strategies have evolved from just 1) focusing on price and 2) focusing on quality, reliability, responsiveness and total cost to a much broader focus of building supplier relationships.
Negotiations: The Art, Science, & Sport of Online Deals
Negotiations can seem as complex as physics, and in fact, people go to college to study the science of negotiating just as they would the laws of nature. At the same time, negotiation is like an ancient art form, some sort of Zen mental jujitsu.
Negotiate Your Way to a Better Salary
1. Be persuasive: It's hard to force your boss to increase your compensation, and trying to do so can potentially damage your working relationship.
Business: Keys To Negotiating Well
Whether it's buying a car, asking for a pay rise, saying 'no' to a friend or renting an apartment - at some stage in our lives we all are going to need to know how to negotiate. Yet, so few of us know the basic skills before embarking on life changing purchases or decisions! These 8 keys will assist you negotiate well.
Can a Service Be a Commodity
Well Enron dealt with this a little for instance an intangible such as the available bandwidth in fiber optic lines. So what is a commodity in a service business? Well, a commodity could be considered are capacity to wash cars for a mobile car wash business like the company I own, the additionally created capacity coming from increased efficiency in studying production rates.
Negotiating Skills: Ask For More Than You Expect To Get
It creates some negotiating room, and you might just get what you're asking for.Whether playing the role of buyer or seller in a sales transaction, asking for more than you expect to get is a classic opening position in negotiations.
Do You Want a Paycheck or a Passion? 10 Qualities Managers are Looking for in Hiring You
Based upon my research of over 300 managers in the last two years, I have found what qualities are most important to hiring managers.You will be in a more competitive advantage if you do a self-assessment to determine if you possess these qualities.