It's All Your Fault at Work!: Managing Narcissists and Other High-Conflict People

This is an informative and helpful manual on how to understand and manage the High Conflict personalities (HCP’S) in your life- those terrible people that you’re not in a position to simply walk away from. It analyses a familiar predicament. You’re at a job you enjoy but there’s a fly in the ointment: an intolerable coworker or boss.The description of HCP’s and their behavior is astonishingly correct. Damaged drama queens with low impulse control and zero conscience, who permeate the workplace with their negativity. Someone at war with the world, who divides people into allies or enemies, all-good or all-bad. The insights into causes, both psychological and physiological, are interesting.The book recommends a gentle approach, based on Empathy, Attention and Respect (EAR) then Connecting, Analyzing, Responding and setting limits (CARS). It suggests at least trying such techniques with your terrible boss, then leaving if they do not respond well to it. It is indeed helpful to realize that it’s all about her, not you, and that dealing with such individuals basically involves not taking any of their wild excesses personally. In my opinion this can only work for so long though, not only because of the energy and vigilance required to manage somebody who is essentially an emotional three year-old, but because of their unpredictability. When you are the only person putting effort and positivity into a relationship, it will ultimately collapse. You will likely find that the HCP eventually forces your hand, either to stop them damaging your reputation in the eyes of others, or simply because they get too extreme in their manoeuvres and manipulations.It’s pretty hard to set limitations on your own boss however. What is really needed is for workplace structures to remedy the epidemic of bad bosses that are allowed to destroy the lives of those under their authority.This book has a significant drawback: it uses too many acronyms and has no glossary for reference. So unless you write down what every acronym means the first time you come across it, you soon find yourself either not understanding what is being spoken about or wasting a lot of time searching back through the book to try and find the various definitions.

I got this book when a high/frequent conflict person began reporting to me. All other supervisor's had been wrung out ragged by this employee. HR taught a class about dealing with difficult people. If I had to rate that session, it was for difficult people at level 1 of 10. My employee was up to 11. Nobody had any suggestions except keep doing what was not working. This book saved me. I did not get pulled into the drama vortex. I was able to put structure in place. Knowing I would run into classic Cluster B behaviors helped me manage myself, my uplines who tended to capitulate to bad behaviors, and give this problem employee new choices about how to behave or leave - it was up to her. Ultimately the employee made her own choices all along the way, knowing the outcomes in advance. Thank you for this material!

The authors have great advice for "managing" High Conflict Personalities at work (a/k/a office jerks). But they are honest that you can only 'manage' people like this for so long. In my case, my boss is hellbent on not only destroying my reputation at work, but trying to keep me at the 'half-dead mouse' stage. Working on getting out ASAP. The advice and tips help make the situation bearable for a temporary time, but for real heartless, soulless pr*x, always have an exit plan.

I enjoyed reading this book, maybe because I could think of a few people in my life that fit some of the personalities the authors describe. The authors give some very helpful tips on what to do and what not to do when working with high conflict people. They give you a simple method to follow, they describe the method and then give many real life scenarios from their own experiences and how the situations were handled using their simple method. I highly recommend this book for both managers and employees alike.

This is an outstanding book when dealing with difficult people at work, customers or anyone in your life It's written by people with legal knowledge and in that profession so it's very spot on. The light will go on for you as you read about anyone who is hard to get along with and filled with a lot of drama. Seems like it's all about them (their emotions) and you are just a role player in their drama. Sound familiar? Don't be that player and learn how to deal with them and move on.

Wow. This book completely blew my mind. The authors understand how the brain works, yes, and they understand how HCP (High Conflict Personalities) people work, yes. What they don't understand, is that we cannot continue as a society, as a community, as a workplace, as a family, to put up with this kind of emotional and psychological violence. It must stop. This book teaches how to tiptoe around folks in the workplace with HCPs, suggesting a whole range of sophisticated methods to communicate effectively with the HCP. As a relationship therapist specialising in personality disordered behaviour, I have to say, that bowing down to political patriarchy, and bowing down to psychological patriarchy is the way of the past. The way of the future is standing up to power. Enough is enough.

When your typical methods of dealing with really challenging people aren't working, this book will help you formulate a new strategy. Well worth reading. I shared this book with another manager at work and she also found it so useful that she recommended it to someone else.

This has been a great resource that I read and re-read. It helps greatly with my interpersonal interactions. If you are serious about advancing in your career you will need to know how to navigate difficult personalities.

Extremely helpful book if you can gather yourself to have the strength of character to follow the advice! It works!!

Real insights

I have just started to read this book and the first page caught my attention right away. It help to explain the cycle of High Conflict People and the personality types. The interaction and the method to disengage with HCP is yet to be read. As a person who has been dealing with a HCP in the work place, I highly recommend you consider this book. Already in the few pages it has helped to answer some of my own questions and I eagerly look forward to the options of how to better deal with HCP.

Bill Eddy knows this topic so well, and writes about it so fluently. This information is useful for anyone who has to deal with anyone.