Unfortunately, difficult people — be they co-workers, bosses or customers — face us constantly. The way we handle them can affect our job, our advancement and even our health.

TechRepublic Premium presents 10 tips to help you cope with these problematic relationships.

Featured text from the guide:

2: Ask questions rather than make statements

Difficult people often have strong opinions. Sometimes they’re right, but other times they might be wrong. And when they’re wrong, a more effective way to point this out is to ask questions rather than make statements. By asking questions, you might be able to help the person recognize the issues in his or her own position, with less risk of a confrontation.

For example, if someone insists on keeping all of your backup tapes in the server room, resist your first urge to state the idiocy of the idea.

Consider instead a question such as, “So what will we do if a fire destroys the data center?”

If the person responds, “We will simply do a restore,” ask, “How will we do a restore if the only backup tapes were destroyed in the fire?”

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