Dealing with Stubborn People
This is the ten zillion dollar question. How in the world do you deal with stubborn people? Lets start out with a bit of advice. The first point that needs to be made is how not to deal with them. The worst thing that you can do in life is to argue with a stubborn person. They dont want to concede and you definitely wont win by arguing. You cant out stubborn a person who operates that way all of the time. The only thing that arguing will result in is hard feelings. I have learned to just let it go when I encounter stubborn people. Sometimes this is very difficult to do because I want to show them that they are wrong and that I am right.
One thing that I have also learned about stubborn people is that they will continue to argue even though they know that they are wrong. That person passes the moral line of right and wrong and only wants to win the argument at all costs. They are overruled by their desire to be right just for the sake of being right. Have you ever heard of court cases where the prosecuting attorney knew that the defendant was innocent but winning the case took priority over justice? This is exactly the same spirit that you deal with when you deal with stubborn people. They are not concerned about anything other than their image. They selfishly refuse to do right. Of course this is extreme cases of stubbornness. Most people may be somewhat stubborn (we all are to a degree) but most of us will listen to reason. There is a line that you must find when you are dealing with someone who wants to stubbornly hold onto a point or position.
Now when you are dealing with a reasonable person who may be stubborn about a certain point the best thing that you can do is find a common place where you both are in agreement and work from there. When you concede you let the person know that you are willing to see their side of the story. Hopefully this will make them want to look at yours. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. It will work with the person who is reasonable. If after you have made that small concession the person does not want to budge its probably best to abandon the negotiation. Leave in peace and dont argue. This sometimes disarms the most hard core stubborn person.
Another way to deal with stubborn people is to just let circumstances take their course. When I cant convince a person that the course of action that they want to take will have negative consequences I just tell them and let nature run its course. After the disaster happens I give them a very mild and humble, I told you so.
You may have to leave the situation for the sake of your own peace. Remember that the stubborn person is comfortable and at home in an argument. This is not your territory so you are at a disadvantage. Retreat so that you can move to higher ground. Sometimes people have done a thing for a certain way for so long and have proclaimed their being right the whole time that they just cant change even though they will admit that you are right. I have seen this happen.
In this situation you have to remove the enabling circumstances which give that person a crutch to hold onto. Once these are removed that person might find the inner strength to concede. In this case you need to make it easier for the person to make the concession that is so hard for them. The concession may need to be made privately because they may not be able to do so around people. Give them the grace to do so. The point is to help that person overcome the problem, not to embarrass them. They may even make the concession in their own mind but never find the guts to make a public apology. In this case let them just concede in their own mind. Whether they concede to you or not is not important.
Stubbornness is sometimes the thing that makes people successful. Stubborn people will refuse to give up when most other people will call it a day and go home. This is a quality which is potentially good but can be bad according to the situation.
Riceland Enterprises
