Sheila Thorne is the WW IT Specialist Profession Leader for IBM. She has over 25 years of IBM experience in diverse areas such as mechanical design, web development, application design, network implementation and facilitation. She has developed and taught methodology classes as well as user classes for AIX. She is also a member of the National Speaker Association and a Senior Member of IEEE. With 25 years at IBM, she has witnessed first hand the dealing with difficult people and on rare occasions been one of "those".

Presentations
Dealing with People You Can't Stand
Do you sometimes think work would be just fine if you didn’t have to work with “certain” people? They are difficult to deal with and don’t help your stress level. If you have been around a bit, you have learned that shiny happy people exist only in a song or in some altered state of consciousness. The majority of us need to interact with people in the real world. Some of these people will have traits we find less than desirable and well, we have to deal with them daily. This session is for anyone curious as to why certain people just tend to annoy us and how we can reduce our stress levels.

Challenges may come in the form of people or situations. My ability to cope depends on my willingness to “re act”. I have tried hiding myself on instant messaging and setting up an out of office notices to avoid contact with other people. Trust me, this is not effective. Therefore, the content of this session is based on what I have been able to learn.

This session will cover:

• Who are these people and why do they act so strange?
• What are strategies for dealing with difficulties?
• What can I do so my stress level is not impacted?

return to program