 In this video, you're going to learn how to recognize the four most common personality types of difficult participants and how to effectively deal with them in your next workshop or a meeting. Hi, I'm Rebecca, a facilitation coach here at AJ & Smart. It's not a question of if you'll have to deal with a skeptic or a difficult participant, but a question of when. Here at AJ & Smart, we've run hundreds of workshops and I have to say, we've encountered difficult participants in almost every single one of them. So when that moment comes about, it's crucial you know how to deal with them in the most effective way possible. Otherwise, you run the risk of one person disrupting your entire workshop. The good news is that there are a few simple, yet effective ways for dealing with difficult participants. Let us know in the comments if you've ever encountered difficult participants in your workshops or meetings and tell us how you've dealt with them. If you want to learn more facilitation techniques to run great workshops, head over to our free facilitation community where thousands of facilitators share their insights and resources, including ways of dealing with the difficult participants. The link is in the description below. As a facilitator, you need to be prepared to handle all kinds of situations that may arise during your workshop. Difficult participants or troublemakers can easily derail your workshops since they tend to talk a lot, distract others, ignore instructions, ask difficult questions that don't add to the discussion, try to take over or try to catch you out. There are four core personality types that people can be associated with. Many people have a combination of a few of these types, but one is usually more dominant. Each type reflects how people see themselves and each one has associated needs, which you can be aware of. The first personality type that you need to be aware of is the alpha. Their main personality trait is that they're power hungry and they see themselves as the leader. Alphas need to feel like they're in control, they need to be empowered, and they need to be validated within a workshop in order for their needs to be met. The second personality type is the beta, and their main personality trait is that they're knowledge-driven and they like to be seen as the expert. People with this personality type need to be consulted and they need to be provided space within a workshop so that they can share their own expertise. The next one is the gamma. People with this personality type like to be given tasks, they love clear direction and they don't like being put on the spot within a workshop. The last personality type is the omega and their main personality trait is that they're resistance-oriented. They can also be seen as the disruptor within the workshop. People with this personality type need to be asked for their input and need to be given space for new ideas. Now that you know the four most common personality types, here are our six tips that are gonna help you handle these personality types within a workshop. Our very first tip is set expectations and ground rules. This works best for process-orientated types since they need to have clear directions and don't like to be put on the spot. However, this tip is going to help you with all four personality types. By setting expectations, ground rules and getting buy-in from your participants right from the beginning, you can hold them accountable to the rules you agreed upon. So let me just explain setting expectations a little bit more. The reason you need to do this is because workshops are intense for all parties involved. The workshop attendees will have to work hard to keep their concentration for long periods of time, take in a lot of information and then put it into practice. So it's highly likely they'll feel overwhelmed at certain points during the workshop. The thing is people tend to assume that they're the only one feeling overwhelmed or finding something challenging. Those thoughts can distract them from the workshop and dial up the pressure, resulting in a less efficient session which leads to disruptive behavior. The good news is you can massively reduce this overwhelm by simply telling people what to expect and how they might feel during the workshop. So next time you're facilitating, try saying these sentences before kicking off a session. It's common that this might feel a bit too rushed. Sometimes it's going to feel like we're losing ideas because we're going to be moving so fast. The exercises might feel weird or awkward and that's just totally normal. It's normal not to have ideas yet. It's normal to feel like this isn't going to work. If you want to learn more about setting expectations within a workshop, click the video here to learn more. Now that we have setting expectations covered, we're going to talk more about ground rules. Setting up the ground rules at the very beginning of a workshop will save you a lot of time and will prevent disrupting discussions down the road. So never skip or postpone the step. If you delay the step, you run the risk of your participants being annoyed and disengaged because you've changed the rules of the game in the middle of the workshop. All you need to do for this step is to display the workshop rules to the participants and get their buy-in by saying something like, is everyone on board with that? It's totally up to you which rules you want to include. This also depends on the needs of the group and specifics of the workshop. But here's our go-to list that we love to use at AJ & Smart. No devices, no judgment, trust the process and make sure that you have a break every 90 minutes. Tip number two is make sure you're actively listening to participants. Listening isn't something that just happens. It's an active process by which you make the decision to really understand what somebody is saying. Listen to genuinely understand their concerns and problems rather than thinking about your next response. One of the main reasons there's disruptive behavior within a workshop is because participants don't feel like their concerns or problems are listened to or heard. So that's why it's so important for you, the facilitator, to make sure that you're making each participant feel like they're really listened to and that their concerns and problems are valid. If you want to learn some more tangible tips about active listening, check out our video here. Tip number three, use a parking lot. Sometimes a circular discussion is heated and complex but isn't relevant to moving forward with the exercise. But the thing is, it's hard for people to stop talking and move on when they feel that the topic that they're talking about is really important and shouldn't be forgotten about. Luckily, there's an easy way to help your participants feel comfortable while also keeping the workshop moving forward. Create a parking lot. The parking lot will help you address the needs of the power hungry, knowledge driven and resistance oriented types as it helps them feel validated, consulted and you're making sure that you're asking them for input. A parking lot is a physical or digital space. So like a whiteboard or an area on your virtual whiteboard where questions, ideas and topics can be parked for later discussion. So if you're running an in-person workshop, all you have to do is write the words parking lot on a piece of paper or on a whiteboard that you're not using for the main exercises and just place that somewhere where everyone can see it. So whenever you spot a circular discussion that isn't going anywhere, simply interject with something like, that's a really big topic. Let's just park that for now and make sure we give a proper consideration. Let's finish this step and come back to it later. Or another thing you could say is, that's a great question. It's outside of the scope for this exercise but let's come back to it later on. So while you're saying that to the participants, you're taking a sticky note, writing down their topic or question and placing it in the parking lot. By doing this and making sure that they physically see you place this into the parking lot, you're making sure that they feel seen and that their concerns are being heard. Something to bear in mind for this one is that you have to include a block of time in your agenda to come back and answer those questions. The parking lot method won't actually work to cut off discussion if your participants don't trust that you'll make time to address the park topics. Our fourth tip is asking probing questions. This tip is gonna be really helpful to address the needs of the power hungry, knowledge driven and resistance oriented types as it's gonna help participants feel validated, consulted and you're gonna be asking for their input. It's inevitable that there'll be times when you're faced with difficult questions to which you don't really know the answer to. Difficult questions can throw you off your game and break up the flow of the workshop if you don't know how to handle them. The solution you may ask? Asking probing questions is the solution, my friends. I like it though. Asking probing questions are like a magic trick that allow you to engage in the question without revealing that you might not know how to answer it. So if you're confronted with a question that you don't know the answer to or one that clearly is aimed at sabotaging the session, try using one of these cues. That's a really interesting question. Can you tell me what's behind you asking that? Are you thinking of a specific situation here? What do you mean exactly by that? Can you tell me a bit more? Probing questions really help you validate the asker and they provide extra information that you might need and they buy you thinking time. Plus the individual might just answer their own question in the process, which is a win-win. Woo-hoo! Tip number five is give tasks. This technique really works well with the process-oriented and the resistance-oriented types since they like to be given tasks and ask for their input. If someone is consistently disrupting the flow of a workshop, resist the urge to simply ignore them, instead give them easy tasks that will keep them occupied and will make them feel involved. So for example, sticking the sticky notes on the wall, handing out different materials like voting dots or even dialing in a remote colleague. This might seem patronizing but what it really does is it allows people to feel involved in a workshop and turn them into allies instead of opponents. The last and final tip is the nuclear option. Although the previous techniques work really well in most cases, you should still expect and prepare for difficult participants who simply won't cooperate. If you've already tried all of the other methods that we've discussed and nothing has worked, approach the person privately and ask them how they're doing and how you can make the workshop better for them. Make sure to take notes while they're speaking to show that you take their comments seriously and that you're genuinely hearing them. Don't get snarky or passive aggressive and try to really understand the reasons for their behavior. Rarely is someone trying to actually sabotage a workshop just because they feel like it. Most of the time there are underlying reasons that you might not be aware of. If that doesn't help, approach the troublemaker again and tell them that they are being disruptive and that their behavior is negatively impacting the workshop for the other people. If that doesn't help either, revert to the final option and ask them to leave the session. Thankfully, encountering a participant like this is very rare and even here at AJ and smart with the hundreds of workshops that we've run in the past, we've only had to use the nuclear option one or two times and that's it. Now you're able to recognize the different personality types within a workshop and you know different tips and techniques to address their needs so that the behavior doesn't derail your workshop. If you like this video and you wanna see more videos like this, make sure to subscribe and hit the bell. If you wanna learn more facilitation techniques and skills from the top facilitators in the world, head over to our free community facilitator club. The link is in the description below. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time. We've tried this workshoppy thing before and it didn't work. Ah, I'm so bored. Do I even need to be here? Why do we even need a facilitator here? We can just solve this problem on our own. I need to reply to some important emails. I can't put this away. This is so childish. How is a little salebook gonna help us with our problem? Excuse me, can we talk about this topic that I feel is way more important? This obviously isn't gonna work. We need way more time to discuss this problem.