Dealing with Difficult People (Udemy.com)
Successful Strategies to Make Tough Conversations Easier
Created by: Deborah Grayson Riegel
Last updated May 2025
What you will learn
- Navigate the six most challenging workplace personalities with confidence
- Transform difficult conversations into productive dialogue
- Protect your well-being while maintaining professionalism
- Move from reactive responses to strategic solutions
How it compares
Against the other 392 rated Udemy courses in Communication Skills on CourseDuck:
- Rating3.6 out of 5among the lower-rated ones
- Reviews1,498#140 of 393 by number of reviews
- Length1.1 hoursshorter than 78% of them
- Last updatedMay 2025earlier than 55% of them
Course Description
Difficult workplace relationships can consume an enormous amount of time and energy.
Maybe you are dealing with a coworker who is negative, a manager who micromanages, an employee who becomes defensive, or someone whose communication style seems to turn every interaction into a challenge. You may replay conversations afterward, avoid the person whenever possible, or spend more time thinking about the relationship than you want to admit.
You cannot control another person’s behavior. But you can become more intentional about how you respond.
This course gives you practical strategies for dealing with difficult people at work while protecting your professionalism, boundaries, and ability to get things done.
You’ll learn how to recognize your own emotional triggers, separate the person from the behavior, and choose responses that are more likely to move the interaction forward. You’ll explore communication techniques for addressing problematic behavior, setting boundaries, managing conflict, and navigating difficult conversations.
You’ll learn how to:
• Respond more effectively to difficult coworkers and challenging employees
• Manage your reactions when someone pushes your buttons
• Identify behaviors rather than relying on labels
• Communicate clearly during tense interactions
• Set professional workplace boundaries
• Handle disagreement and conflict more constructively
• Deal with micromanaging behavior
• Prepare for difficult conversations
• Avoid communication habits that escalate tension
• Decide what is within your control — and what is not
• Protect working relationships while still addressing problems
This course is not about diagnosing people, changing someone’s personality, or pretending difficult behavior is acceptable. It is about developing stronger workplace communication and conflict-management skills so you have more options when challenging situations arise.
Whether the difficult person is a coworker, employee, manager, client, or other professional contact, you’ll leave with practical tools for approaching the relationship with greater clarity, confidence, and control.
Instructor Details
- 3.6 Rating
1,498 Reviews
Deborah Grayson Riegel
Deborah Grayson Riegel is a keynote speaker, executive coach, author, and leadership communication expert who helps professionals communicate more effectively, lead with confidence, and navigate the everyday challenges of working with people. She teaches at Wharton, Duke, Columbia, and Peking University and has worked with leaders and teams at organizations including Google, Amazon, BlackRock, and NASA.
Deb is also a contributor to Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today, Fast Company, and Forbes, where she writes about leadership, communication, workplace relationships, and professional development.
Throughout her career, Deb has helped professionals at every level build the practical people skills that make work better—from communicating clearly and confidently to giving feedback, managing teams, navigating difficult conversations, facilitating effective meetings, presenting ideas, and adapting to an evolving workplace.
Her teaching combines research-backed insights with practical tools, relatable examples, and strategies learners can put to use immediately. Whether you're a new manager, an experienced leader, or simply looking to become a stronger communicator and colleague, Deb's courses are designed to help you build skills you can use in real conversations, real meetings, and real workplace situations.
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Reviews
By Kelly Munkittrick on 10/8/2026
The actual content was great and helpful. I really did not like the AI portion though. Creating fake content and situations while also incorporating the points, is almost impossible within the time limit. Also, AI was very poor at understanding. The course would have been great without the AI part.
By Joseph Soubie on 8/6/2026
Great explanation about the different types of people that I work with everyday. And how to handle the situations that they put me in.
By Dylan Richardson on 6/1/2026
I was not a fan of the AI role player sessions using the microphone option. One problem being, its difficult to create dialogue with a computer. I found the chat option to be more beneficial. Also, the microphone option was picking up other coworkers talking in the background and inputting that into the conversation when it did not apply to what I was trying to input.
By Robert Mangold on 5/19/2026
Good Refresher course on Office and Management dynamics and to learn how to better work as a team
By Paul Easley on 5/17/2026
Just AI growing still. The more it is used, I'm certain the better this will get. I answered some of the specific topics, but AI didn't recognize it because I did not use their quoted wording. Great concept though, good information.
By Kelli Heape on 5/14/2026
This course offered some genuinely useful tools for workplace communication, self-awareness, and handling difficult personalities more professionally ✨ I appreciated the focus on introspection, emotional regulation, and maintaining professionalism under stress, and there were definitely practical takeaways I can apply moving forward That said, the heavy reliance on rigid personality “types” sometimes felt overly simplistic and leaned too much into stereotyping rather than acknowledging how nuanced workplace dynamics can be ⚖️ The AI roleplay feature also had strong potential but felt somewhat underdeveloped, as the scenarios were interesting but not always as realistic or adaptive as they could have been Overall, this was a solid foundational course with helpful strategies, but some sections felt repetitive or overpackaged Worth taking for the practical communication skills, but there’s definitely room for improvement
By John Rodriguez on 5/12/2026
The AI practice was creative, but not needed. Real life examples will go much further into the practice. Most of the recommendations had similarities like be professional and document everything.
By Russell Shearman on 5/10/2026
Roleplaying by utilizing ai and a microphone does not work when you are not in an office environment, including ambient noises (trains/cars/construction), as well as having a radio consistently going off due to being required to respond to calls. Additionally, it seemed to be a review of "Managing Narcissists Blamers, Dramatics, and More..." by Mark Murphy which was published December 2019.
By Sharon Samms on 4/16/2026
Yes this was a good match, there was a lot to take away and that can be utilized going forward.
By Swapnil Parkhi on 4/8/2026
Yes it was good match as often working on Projects and managing a large team it comes with its own problems. This course will provide me some guidelines to tackle the same
Quality Score
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Overall Score : 72 / 100












