Leadership is a tough gig. No matter who you are, you’re going to encounter tough conversations. It just seems to happen more often in leadership! Challenging conversations can bring out the worst in us. It’s all-to-easy to lose our cool and give in to frustration and anger.
What you wanted to be a calm, productive conversation is suddenly a shouting match!
Even if you have all the confidence in the worst when it comes to your communication skills, we can all be set on edge by those confrontational conversations. Leaders, we must keep our cool. This is easier said than done, but it is not impossible.
Here are just a few ways you can train yourself to stay calm in the middle of a heated discussion.
5 Ways to Stay Calm & Collected During Heated Conversations
1) Recognize the Signs of Fight-or-Flight
Fight-or-flight is our very human, very important response to a perceived threat. You’re no doubt familiar with the feeling: an overwhelming surge in adrenaline, increasing heart rate and blood pressure and feeling flushed, agitated, and on-edge.
It’s not a fun feeling, but it is extremely important when it comes to dangerous situations. Unfortunately, our bodies and brains can perceive a verbal confrontation as a threat — triggering the fight-or-flight response.
When this happens, something called the “amygdala hijack” occurs. This is when that fight-or-flight instinct over-reacts when stress, causing the amygdala to take control away from our more rational, logical frontal lobes. Your emotions take over and you’re likely to say things that you will regret.
Be able to identify when your body is about to have a serious fight-or-flight response: sweaty, clammy skin, increased heart rate, flushed face, and goosebumps all point to an amygdala hijack. When this happens, you should step away from the conversation until you have cooled off.
2) Keep Your Goal in Focus
A difficult conversation can cause us to lose focus on our goals in having the conversation in the first place. Keeping focus is critical. Otherwise, we risk missing the forest for the trees — bogged down in minute details and trivial things that surround the main issue. Keep your focus on what it is your want the conversation to accomplish.
You’re not here to win an argument, but to get something specific communicated for the betterment of your team and their work.
3) Take a Break
There is no shame in stepping away from a heated conversation. If you do feel yourself getting overly emotional, defensive, or tense in response to the conversation, say so. Admit that you need to stretch, take a break, and revisit the conversation later. Asserting your need to break isn’t weak. It’s far better than saying something you’re likely to regret.
This can be a break to breathe, regather your thoughts, and prepare to continue the discussion calmly and productively.
4) Listen with Empathy
Our listening skills are perhaps the most valuable communication skills that we have. How we listen to others reflects the outcomes of our conversations. If you’re finding yourself ready with a snappy mental rebuttal for everything that the other person says, you’re not listening well.
Listening well means taking in all of the information given to you and processing it with the mindset and experience of someone else in mind. Great listeners don’t dismiss those that they disagree with. Rather, they try to see and understand a variety of perspectives.
Empathy and understanding don’t mean that you agree with the other person. However, this empathy can keep you calm and prevent fight-or-flight reactions.
Listen with the intent to understand, not to prepare your rebuttal.
5) Put it All in Perspective
Perspective matters. When we’re in the middle of a tough conversation or an argument, coming out on top seems like the most important thing in the world. They seem to carry a lot of weight. At the end of the day, however, few conversations are these big, important turning points.
What really matters? Winning or preserving a positive working relationship? Will this even be a big issue in a month? A week? Oftentimes, it won’t. This doesn’t mean it is unimportant or not worth addressing. It does mean, however, that you should be able to discuss things without becoming heated.
Keep your eyes firmly fixed on what matters in the long term.
How do you diffuse a tense or heated argument in the workplace? Share in the comments!