Don’t you just love pesky neighbors?  We’ve got one who wants us to trim our trees because they block the view from her kitchen window while she’s washing dishes.  It’s not like she has a panorama of the city or anything.  It’s just one small window and the trees only bother her when she does the dishes (which can’t be all that often since she lives alone and travels a lot).  We’ve told her several times that we want the fullness of the trees throughout the summer because they shade the house but that when we trim them in the Fall we’ll take her needs into consideration.  In an effort to get us to do what she wants she says things like, “I thought I had nice neighbors” and ”I thought I was buying a home with a view” (right - it’s Pasadena not Malibu).  She even told another neighbor that I was hostile to her.  This is typical passive aggressive behavior.  If you listen to only the words they seem benign, but at the heart of it there’s no interest in the other person’s viewpoint or needs.  So how do you handle a passive aggressive person?  It’s not easy, but here are a few tips:

1. Don’t go for their bait.  They want to engage you in an argument where you wind up as the bad person and they wind up as the victim.  This can’t happen if you don’t respond to nonsensical statements such as, “I thought I had nice neighbors.”
2. Stay neutral by acknowledging without agreeing.  To keep the conversation on an even, objective keel use statements like, “I can understand your concern” or “I understand why it’s important to you.”  This usually soothes the passive aggressive personality. 
3. Be clear about your intentions.   Passive aggressive people often take your words and twist them to suit their needs.  That’s harder to do if you are crystal clear about the actions you intend to take (eg. “My plan is to trim the trees in the Fall…”). 
4. Get/put as much as you can in writing.  When dealing with passive aggressive people at work it helps to get things in writing so that you can refer back to it when they conveniently forget what was agreed to or renege on their commitments. 

TAGS: assertive skills, assertiveness, dealing with passive aggressive people, pesky neighbors