How To Talk To Someone You Can't Stand

Matthew's boss was inept and utterly irritating. As a way of starting conversations, the guy would ask if something he had just requested was finished yet. Then he’d laugh. Making matters worse, Matthew, a program manager at a software company, had to walk past his boss many times in a typical day--a recipe for daily discomfort, if not outright conflict.

Matthew was a client of Dr. Srini Pillay, a Harvard professor of psychiatry and chief executive of the Neurobusinessgroup, a consultancy that uses insights from the field of neuroscience to improve communications within organizations. Pillay came up with two survival tactics to avoid confrontation and ease Matthew's pain.

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The first, a kind of pre-emptive strike, involved sprinkling timely, innocuous compliments. "Nice shoes, Bill," Matthew would say. Or, "Thanks for the memo, Bill, it was really helpful." When spreading sweetness and light grew tiresome, Matthew would look for a third person or subject about which the two could find easy agreement: Sports, music, food, even politics.

“Matthew was able to stop his boss in his tracks and derail him long enough to avoid listening to him,” says Pillay “Without those strategies, he would not have been able to last at the company."

Face it: Some people are simply insufferable. With any luck, they can be avoided, but not always. So what do you do when there's just no escape?

"Behave as though you are handling a poisonous snake," says Dr. Richard Pomerance, a Boston psychotherapist who has counseled executives at Harvard, Cisco and American Express on handling thorny personalities. "Survival is the most important goal."

Your job isn't the only thing on the line. "Getting angry is like taking a small dose of slow-acting poison," says Redford Williams, professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center. Williams has spent over 20 years studying the impact of the mind and emotions on health. His conclusion: Anger leads to higher blood pressure, arterial damage and the stimulation of cholesterol-filled fat cells to empty into the bloodstream.

With survival in mind, here are a handful of time-tested conversational strategies for dealing with people you can't stand.

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