We say it in the article and we mean it: there’s no such thing as a difficult person — just a strength someone hasn’t learned to work with yet. Sometimes that someone is you (hi, me too). These are the actual tools Rayne uses with the leaders she coaches — for naming the hard thing without it becoming a fight about character, for getting out of the story you’re spinning about someone, for catching your own strengths before they run unmanaged, and for opening the door when the person you report to feels a little intimidating. Take the ones that fit where you’re standing. Leave the rest.
These tools come from Rayne Martin and her coaching practice, It’s the Impact. Rayne built them over years of coaching high-stakes, strong-personality leaders — the exact people this piece is about.
What’s Inside
- The 60-Second Feedback Guide – Notice / Impact / Suggest — When you have to say the hard thing and don’t want it to turn into a fight about character. Four moves, about a minute.
- Empower Your Thinking — When you’re spinning on what they really meant and can’t put it down. A worksheet for setting the story down and dealing with the actual behavior in front of you.
- Managing the Side Effects of Your Strengths — When your own intensity is landing harder than you mean it to. A quick Reflect → Identify → Decide pass to catch one strength before it runs unmanaged.
- Raising Feedback With a Manager Who Can Be Intimidating — When the “difficult” one is your boss, and you need to open the door and say the thing clearly and respectfully.
When these resources aren’t enough
A lot of this you can do on your own, starting today. But some of it you can’t see or do alone — when you keep having the same conflict with different people, when you ARE the “difficult” one and need someone to show you your real-time impact, or when you’ve done the reframe and the feedback and it’s still not landing. That’s exactly Rayne’s work, from both directions: coaching the “difficult” leaders themselves, AND helping you work with the difficult people around you.
Connect with Rayne!
About Rayne
Rayne Martin grew up in a tiny north Louisiana town of about 200 and has spent her career in the seats where strong personalities and big stakes collide — VISTA community mediation in Philadelphia, political campaigns and a chief-of-staff role in the Bay Area, and then Chicago, where she built the Chicago Housing Authority’s relocation department from a team of 6 into a 50-person operation running a half-billion-dollar budget, executing a federal consent decree while buildings closed on 24-hour notice. After Katrina she returned to Louisiana as chief of staff in the Recovery School District, served as the state’s chief of innovation and lead author of its Race to the Top application, and founded a Stand for Children affiliate — before opening her coaching practice, It’s the Impact, twelve years ago.
Her purpose is specific: help leaders push past their own limiting beliefs so they can make the world better for the people who don’t have access to the seats they’re sitting in. It traces back to her mother, who grew up being taught she was worthless — and to a need Rayne came to understand in herself, to help people in a way she couldn’t help her own mom growing up. Today the engine under the work is equity. She has OCD, calls herself “unbossible,” and will cheerfully tell you she’s a difficult person — which is exactly why she’s so good at helping other people work with theirs.
Work with Rayne
