Responding to aggressors. Use this job aid to assess how well you cope with hostile or passive-aggressive people in the workplace. How effective are your coping skills in these situations? Rate yourself using the scale 1=never, 2=seldom, 3=sometimes, 4=frequently, 5=always. Compare your score to the rating key that follows.

The Science of Better Learning

Verbal assailants want to get you emotionally involved in the no-win situations they set up. Then they feel superior to you when their verbal attacks succeed.

If you get hooked and try to play their game by their rules, you'll always lose. That's because verbal assailants create the game and its rules to their advantage.

Verbal assailants exist in practically every work environment. These are individuals with low self-esteem who use derision, patronizing attitudes, or judgmental behavior to knock down others while they build themselves up. If they can, they will draw you emotionally into their no-win situations.

To avoid these no-win situations, and to create a more positive work environment, you can use three effective strategies to handle verbal assailants in the workplace.

Hostile-aggressive dirty diggers can be found in just about every workplace, and they are difficult to be around. At their best or at their worst – depending on your view – they can offend just about everyone.

Their insensitive behavior seems to come naturally to them. Any contact you have with a dirty digger will most likely be unpleasant.

If there is a dirty digger in your workplace displaying hostile-aggressive behavior, you can use a number of strategies to cope with this individual.

Typically, dirty diggers are insecure individuals who use jokes, sarcasm, and offensive, insensitive, or disrespectful behavior when dealing with others.

To properly handle confrontations with dirty diggers, you should keep a number of points in mind, including the following:

But you may have to work with someone who treats you and co-workers this poorly – someone who is condescending, domineering, and easily enraged. People who display these hostile-aggressive characteristics are known as "hotheads." It's in your best interest to be able to identify traits of a hothead.

Hotheads exist in just about every work environment. These hostile-aggressive individuals can be condescending, domineering, irascible, and disruptive, and can have a negative effect on your workplace or team. Your goal is to cope with the hothead when you encounter him in the workplace.

You may even gain the hothead's respect if you deal with him appropriately. At a minimum, you'll maintain your self-respect. Three strategies, each of which are explained here, can help you defuse explosive situations with the hothead by dealing with him appropriately.

Brief description of the benefits drawn from applying the techniques presented in this course

Knowledge wardens exhibit a classic passive-aggressive type of behavior. You've heard the saying "Knowledge is power." Knowledge wardens have embraced that saying wholeheartedly.

They desire both power and control as a means to gain acknowledgment of their status or position. In their minds, if they have control and hold power, then others will have to acknowledge them as having great worth.

People can get frustrated and angry when information or materials they need are withheld from them. When this happens at work, your question becomes how to cope with the person withholding the information – a person known as a knowledge warden.

Your goal is to get the information you need to do your job effectively, no matter who is the keeper of that information.

Talking to someone who never responds to you can be frustrating. Unfortunately, this is probably a common experience for you if there is an unresponsive aggressor in your workplace.

The unresponsive aggressor is someone who fails to give a reasonable response – typical passive-aggressor behavior for this type of person. Before you can cope effectively with the unresponsive aggressor, you must be able to recognize this person in your workplace.

Unresponsive aggressors are present in most workplaces. These are individuals who fail to give responses to even your direct queries, which is typical of their passive-aggressive behavior.

They use avoidance and silence to manipulate others and to protect their own dignity and integrity. Since unresponsive aggressors can be disruptive to your workplace, you need to identify and cope with them effectively.

The waffler will support the strongest person in the room or go with the majority, the second waffler characteristic. If you observe her in a meeting, the waffler will wait to voice an opinion until the majority emerges.

She will vote with the majority. If the opinion shifts direction, you can be assured that the waffler's opinion will shift with it. It's amazing how fast a waffler can alter his support for someone or something.

Individuals known as wafflers exist in just about every work environment. These passive-aggressive individuals want to be liked, so they try to please everyone.

But instead, they aggravate everyone around them with their indecision. In addition, wafflers tend to avoid confrontation, have a habit of agreeing with everyone, usually side with the majority, and have an inordinate need for approval.

This type of behavior can cause frustration to build in the workplace, and result in a negative attitude throughout the work environment.

A brief list of strategies to use when dealing with aggressive people.

Course wrap-up and conclusions. Thank you for your interest!

You think knowing stuff changes the game? You think sitting in a library, stacking up facts like you’re building a Jenga tower, is gonna make you a winner? Man, that’s cute. But life ain't a trivia night. Information alone? It’s worthless. It’s like having a Lamborghini in your garage but you never learned how to drive. You just sit in it, making engine noises. Vroom vroom. People walk by, they see the car, but they also see you ain't going nowhere. You got all this knowledge, all these textbooks, but when life throws a punch, you’re still looking up the definition of "duck." It’s what you *do* with that information that actually matters. Don't be the person with the shiny car and no keys.