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DEALING WITH DIFFICULT PEOPLE: TURN TENSION INTO COLLABORATION
with Dr. Michelle Brody
June 10, 2025
3-Hour (Virtual)
Skills Acquired
  • Recognize why people become defensive, apply techniques to diffuse resistance, and deliver feedback in a way that encourages openness and growth.
  • Learn how to break negative cycles, reframe workplace conflicts, and create an environment that fosters collaboration and trust.
  • Discover proven strategies to encourage difficult colleagues to shift their behaviors, align with team goals, and embrace accountability.
  • Understand how leaders can set the tone for constructive interactions, establish clear expectations, and promote a culture of respect and cooperation.
Topics Covered

Dealing with Defensiveness

  • Understanding why people become defensive and how to respond effectively
  • Techniques to provide feedback without triggering resistance
  • How to navigate emotionally charged conversations with difficult colleagues

Mindsets That Shift Team Dynamics

  • Identifying harmful patterns that reinforce difficult behaviors
  • Reframing workplace conflicts to create opportunities for change
  • Cultivating a mindset of influence rather than frustration

Best Practices to Help People Change

  • Encouraging collaboration by aligning individual and team goals
  • Proven strategies to break negative cycles and foster accountability
  • Setting clear expectations and reinforcing positive behavior shifts

The Leader’s Role in Positive Team Dynamics

  • How leaders can model and reinforce constructive behaviors
  • Creating an environment where trust, communication, and cooperation thrive
  • Practical steps to turn difficult team interactions into growth opportunities

Difficult colleagues show up at work in many forms and lead to frustration and lower productivity. What can be done about a micromanaging, undermining, uncooperative or thwarting colleague? Team members, who get impossibly defensive when you try to offer feedback? The intuitive methods leaders use to manage "difficult coworkers" often backfire, resulting in vicious cycles of worsening behavior.

This program will share mindsets and methods for opening up the possibility of change when all other efforts have stopped working. Discover how to apply proven strategies to resolve your toughest workplace challenges.

Michelle Brody, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and executive coach who brings 25 years of experience to the challenging problem of interactional conflict. Dr. Brody has worked with global teams, complicated couple conflicts, and polarized communities, and has deep expertise in unlocking stuck dynamics. Her approach for teams is informed by powerful psychological tools that break down defensive walls, build trust, shift unproductive mindsets, and change vicious interactional cycles. She is the author of Own Your Armor: Revolutionary Change for Workplace Culture.

Dr. Brody has helped teams reach greater collaboration, improve communication, and resolve tension across a wide range of industries; at global companies like Meta (Facebook), Siemens, and Alcoa, as well as for smaller companies, startups, and partnerships. She has also served as a master trainer of psychologists, professional coaches, and professionals who work in human resources and learning & development.