This blog will provide you with advice on how to get difficult people to buy into your project.  We also talk about why you need to build rapport when rolling out culture changes across large organisational estate.

If you are a facilities manager, sustainability manager or operations manager, this blog is going to benefit you no end.

Why do you need buy-in from difficult people?

We can only assume that you want to get things done in your organisation as smoothly as possible. It’s going to be far simpler to get things done if you can apply effective teamwork. To use teamwork and to collaborate with other people, you need to build up rapport.

Understand their objectives

Start by learning about the objectives of other people in your organisation. Once you know where they want to go, you can help them, and when you help them, rapport begins to grow. To understand their objectives you will have to open your ears and listen to what they’re saying, what their ambitions are, what problems they’re having and where they see their ideas going. By acknowledging, respecting and helping them with these objectives, you will build a lasting relationship that will create reciprocal benefits. It’s part of human nature to help those who help us- reciprocation.

Consistency

You must maintain consistency throughout your rapport building venture if you wish to get difficult people on board, because it is ultimately a trust exercise. How you behave now will be seen as an indicator of how you are going to behave in future, and can really help you solidify the mutually beneficial relationship. 

We've put together our 15 best tips for winning against difficult people.

Find them here.