How to Work with Complicated People: Strategies for Effective Collaboration with (Nearly) Anyone

Who is the most complicated person you work with?

You probably don’t have to think very hard to answer that question. You already know their name, their job title, their quirks, and their flaws. You have first-hand experience with the mental and emotional fallout they leave in their wake. You’ve seen the problems their complexity creates for everyone on their team. You wish you could fix them, solve them, ignore them, or teleport them to a parallel dimension.

But you can’t.

You have to work with them.

(You could quit, but your next job will have a complicated person waiting for you.)

That means you need effective strategies to collaborate with (nearly) anyone. Especially the picky, prickly, problematic ones.

Drawing from his global consulting experience with teams and leaders from the glitz of sports and entertainment, to the number-crunching world of finance, to the meticulous realms of insurance, pharma, and manufacturing, Ryan Leak provides proven strategies for:

Seeing challenging individuals as human beings to understand rather than problems to solve
Detoxing unrealistic expectations and getting comfortable with complicated
Learning to communicate effectively in complex environments
Embracing healthy disagreement as a tool to discover better solutions
Setting boundaries that let people into your world without letting them run your world