When People Get Weird at Work

We live in a professional world, don't we?

A world where everyone checks their emails before 7am and pretends they love team building exercises. Yet when l opened my inbox this morning, l found another complaint about someone having a "moment" in the office kitchen.

All because someone couldn't handle being told the milk was off.

What really happens when people get difficult?

Your carefully planned meeting turns into chaos. Someone starts raising their voice, another person shuts down completely, and suddenly you're wondering if you should have stayed in bed. The thing is though : bad behaviour doesn't just disappear because we're adults now. We all learned that the hard way during lockdown.

Good management knows that incentives work but what about when someone's having a proper meltdown in front of customers? When your best employee suddenly becomes impossible to work with? That's when you realise training matters more than you thought.

Why This Actually Matters (And Why Most People Avoid It)

Look, it's easy to stay calm when everything goes to plan. But the moment someone pushes your buttons or starts making unreasonable demands, how do you keep it together? How do you actually get stuff done instead of just surviving the day?

This training teaches you to:

• Work out what's really going on (spoiler: it's usually not what you think)
• Talk without making things worse
• Set boundaries without sounding like you swallowed a management handbook
• Turn arguments into something that might actually solve problems

Whether you're managing people, dealing with customers, or just trying to survive open plan offices without developing a nervous twitch, these skills matter. They make the difference between going home drained or going home feeling like you handled things well.

We start with communication because honestly, most problems begin there. How you say things, your body language, even which words you pick can either calm someone down or wind them up completely. Active listening sounds boring but it's actually quite powerful when someone's losing their mind and you need to figure out what they actually want.

Then there's understanding anger and emotional triggers. We all get frustrated, that's normal. But some people turn into completely different creatures when they're upset, and if you know what to look for you can do something about it before everything explodes in your face.

Working With Different Types of Difficult People

Some people are passive aggressive, they'll agree to your face then complain to everyone else. Others just blow up spectacularly. A few will argue with everything you say just because they can, even if you're telling them the building's on fire.

This bit helps you work out what you're dealing with and what actually works with each type. Because what calms down an angry customer might make a passive aggressive colleague even more resentful.

The hardest part though is changing patterns. Sometimes the same argument happens every single week with the same person and you start thinking maybe it's just how things are, maybe this is your life now. But here's the thing : if you change how you approach it, you can actually influence what happens next time too.

Which sounds obvious when you say it like that but most people never try.

We finish with real scenarios where you can practice without the risk of actually making things worse, plus time to ask questions about your specific workplace disasters.

Who Actually Needs This?

• Team leaders who are sick of playing referee between grown adults
• Customer service people who deal with the public (honestly, enough said)
• HR teams who get called in when things have already gone wrong
• Anyone who works with humans and occasionally fantasises about working with robots instead

Getting This Sorted

Available in person or online, whatever works for your team. We can also adjust it for your industry because dealing with difficult customers is quite different from managing difficult colleagues or trying to reason with suppliers who've clearly lost the plot.

You can find us across Australia in all the main cities : Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra. If you want something tailored to your specific brand of workplace chaos or prefer online sessions, we can sort that too.

Ready to handle difficult behaviour without questioning all your life choices? Get in touch and we'll work out what suits your situation best.

Because life's too short to spend it walking on eggshells around people who should know better.