Managing Strong Emotions in a Difficult Conversation (Video)

Elinor Whitmore reviews some tools for managing strong emotions in a challenging conversation, whether the emotions are your own, or those of the other person.

To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.

To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.

To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.

Managing Strong Emotions in a Difficult Conversation

Here’s the video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7iZjTQRQ2Q

{Transcript}

I think we all know that difficult conversations can bring up very strong emotions, and I think we also know that strong emotions can create difficult conversations. So what we’re going to be looking at today is how we can manage strong emotions in a difficult conversation. Now, clients will often come to me and say, “I need to know how to deal with an emotional person.” So they’re looking at how to develop their skills to manage somebody else’s emotional response. For other people, like myself, the challenge is how to manage my own emotional response in a difficult conversation. So we’re going to be looking at both—managing the other person’s responses and managing our own.

We’re also going to talk about what are some common misperceptions about how to manage difficult emotions. I think it’s important for us to start with that because I think these misperceptions often lead people to do things that actually make a conversation even more difficult.

The first one is that people will often think, “If we could just stick with the facts—just the facts, ma’am—it would make the conversation easier.” So they try, for themselves and with others, to put a lid on the emotion or to keep the emotion in. The thinking being, if we could just talk about facts and live in our brains and be all rational, it would all be good. And in many circumstances, that may be the case. If you can keep the emotions down or keep them in and just focus on the facts, you may be able to do some problem-solving.

Yet, in many cases, with many difficult conversations, that may not be the case. Part of that is because it’s not just the expression of strong emotions that can make a conversation difficult—it’s that the emotions are there at all. It’s the experiencing of the strong emotions. So certainly, yes—if someone is experiencing a strong emotion and, as a result, they start to yell or they start to make personal attacks or they do something dramatic—that can make a conversation difficult. But even if they’re just experiencing the emotions within themselves, that experience can make the conversation difficult because it can interfere with our ability to listen.

So if I’m in the grips of a strong emotion—whether it’s that I’m mad, or that I’m frustrated, or I’m sad, or I’m hurt—like I’m caught up in that and we’re having a conversation, it’s going to be hard for me to listen to what you say. It’s going to be hard for me to take in that information. It’s going to be hard for me to think about it. It’s going to be hard for me to formulate a response. So we may be having a conversation in the sense that you’re talking and I’m alive, but we may not actually be communicating all that well. And the conversation may become difficult because I’m expending a lot of energy trying to keep my emotions within myself. So that’s one of the problems that it can create.

The other problem with just sticking to the facts is that sometimes, the emotions are the issue. So if I come to you one day and I say, “You’re not going to believe the day I’ve had. On Friday, my boss came up to me and told me that I had to do this presentation on Monday morning for the board and my colleagues. So I spent the whole weekend working on it. I felt really kind of angry that he would ask me to do that on the weekend, but I put things aside and I didn’t go out with my kids. They were, of course, disappointed and I was disappointed. But Monday morning, I’m all ready to go and I arrived to do the presentation, and my boss is there. In front of some of my colleagues and other board members, my boss turns to me and says, ‘We’re not going to have time for the little presentation you wanted to give.’ And I think—’The little presentation I wanted to give?’ I was so mad at him and I was embarrassed in front of my colleagues.”

So if I tell you that story and you decide to just stick with the facts, I mean, the facts are: “Oh, so I understand, Ellenor. You had a presentation. You were told on Friday you were going to have to do it. You spent a lot of time on the weekend getting ready for it. And then on Monday, you were told that you weren’t going to be able to do your presentation.” Like, if we stick with just the facts, we’ve basically missed the whole story—because the reason I’m telling you that story is because of the emotions it created in me. Because it was frustrating. Because it was embarrassing. Because it made me angry. So that’s the whole point of the story and that’s why I’m telling it to you.

So if we keep with just the facts, we may miss out on what’s really important to that person. That’s one of the challenges—that sometimes people think they just need to stick with the facts in a difficult conversation.

Another misunderstanding—or a misperception, in my view—is that they think that there are good emotions and bad emotions. So we tend to think that positive emotions—joy and love—those are good. And things like anger and jealousy—those are bad emotions. So people will judge the emotions, and what they try to do is keep what they think are negative emotions down and out, in that sense of there being good emotions and bad emotions.

I don’t actually think it is a very helpful concept because, when we start to do that, we don’t allow ourselves, first of all, to feel the full range of emotions. Also, emotions just are. They’re just like our arms and our legs—they’re not good or bad. It’s what we do with them that can be good or bad. In the same way that I can use my arms to hug or I can use my arms to push somebody away, the arms are just the arms—it’s what I do with them that’s good or bad. Well, it’s the same thing with emotions.

If we stop judging them, we can start looking at them for what they are, which is a source of information. My emotional response gives me information about what’s working or not working for me in a situation. So, if I’m in a situation and I’m feeling really good—I’m excited and it’s really pleasant—that’s feedback for me that things are working for me. But if I’m in a situation and I feel frustrated or angry, that’s information that maybe one of my values has been violated.

An example would be: I like to be treated with respect, and somebody is being very disrespectful to me. Well, that might be frustrating, or it might make me angry, or it might embarrass me. It’s going to create emotions within me. So, that’s giving me feedback—it’s saying, “This situation isn’t okay. One of your values is being violated.” Once I take in that information, then I can choose what to do about it. I can take action on it.

We tend to think of certain emotions, like anger, as being negative because people often act out negatively as a result of those emotions. We see lots of people doing really lovely things out of love, and we see lots of people doing some really problematic things because they’re mad. But they don’t need to—if they could make a distinction between how they feel and what they do.

The other thing that we do see sometimes is we see people who are angry—they’re angry about injustice or angry about inequality—and they turn that anger into a positive action. They try to make change. So, there’s nothing by definition that’s positive or negative about an emotion. If we can put that idea aside, use them as information about ourselves—or if it’s the other person who’s having an emotional response—use it as information about what’s important to them, whether their needs are getting met or whether something about their sense of themselves is being violated.

If we can look at it as being information, we can learn from it, and we can choose what to do. So, the first main point is: we don’t want to, in my view, push down emotions or push them to the side. We want to figure out how to use them appropriately. So, let’s look at some ideas about how to use them appropriately.

Some of the ideas I’m going to talk about come from a book called Difficult Conversations, which was written by three professors at Harvard—Patton, Heen, and Stone. They give us some ideas about how we might approach emotions and difficult conversations. One of the things they tell us is we should not confuse judgments with feelings.

An example is: you see somebody, and they say to you, “You know what, you’re really selfish,” and you think, “I’m selfish?” And they say, “That’s just how I feel.” Well, labeling somebody as selfish isn’t a feeling—it’s a judgment. They may have feelings—they may feel undervalued, they may feel disrespected—that’s led them to think that you’re selfish. But labeling somebody as something isn’t a feeling—it’s a judgment.

We need to keep in mind also that our feelings are as important as their feelings, and their feelings are as important as ours. Typically, people fall into one of two camps in the situation. I see a lot of people who are managers falling into the camp of paying attention to other people’s emotional responses, feeling it’s their job to manage other people’s emotional responses and to resolve conflict, being available to other people’s emotions and not necessarily paying attention to their own—because they think it’s not for them, as the manager, to do that in the workplace. And maybe it’s not for them to do that in the workplace. And yet, they’re having an emotional response—and one would suggest that that needs to be taken care of in some appropriate way, in some appropriate circumstances.

Then you find the flip side, which is people who are very good about knowing their emotions—who are perfectly free to tell you how mad you’ve made them or how upset they are with you or all the stuff—and they don’t take any responsibility for the impact that they might have on you or the emotions that they might create in others. So, some people need to learn that their emotions are as important as other people’s. Some of us need to learn the reverse—which is that theirs are as important as ours.

We need to look at ways to bring emotion back into the conversation, where it’s appropriate. One way of doing that is to describe your emotions rather than acting them out like a one-act play. We’ve seen the people who do the big anger—we’ve seen people do the big upset—and they act out all of their emotions. What we’re recommending is that you describe them.

So, in a conversation, you say to somebody, “You know what, this conversation is really hard for me. I’m finding it’s making me quite angry,” or, “I have to say, some of your comments are really upsetting to me.” In some contexts, being able to name your emotions will actually allow them to come out a little bit—it releases some of the pressure, and it gives feedback to that person: “What you are doing is problematic for me,” or “What you are doing is hurting my feelings.” So, it gives them important feedback.

The other thing we want to try to do is to listen to the emotions that other people have without judging them. We often find that people start judging other people’s emotions—”Oh, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill,” “I don’t know why you’re getting so upset,” “Why don’t you just calm down?” Well, all of those things are judging somebody’s emotional response. Again, we just want to look at it as information about them—maybe it’s information about the negative impact we’re having on them—and then figure out what we’re going to do.

So lastly, in a difficult conversation, you may have tried to do a number of these things. You may still find yourself in the grips of a strong emotion, or you may still find that the other person has been taken with a strong emotion. In those circumstances, we need to think about how can I regain my composure, or how can I help them regain their emotional composure.

I’ve spoken to lots of clients about what they do, and what’s interesting is the range in responses is huge. Some people want to be on their own. Some people want to do something entirely different—listen to music or start cooking. Some people want to talk to somebody. So, when we look at that whole range (and there’s many more responses), we need to think about what works for us. Are you somebody who likes to talk about it? Or are you somebody who likes to be on your own? Are you somebody who wants to play music? Or are you somebody who wants to attend to a different task?

We need to know what works for us and then strategize to get it. We also need to be aware that the other person we’re having the conversation with might want something very different. So, I’m all about the talking, but I often find myself in situations where other people are all about being on their own for a bit. So, we have to negotiate—how are we going to do this? Because you may want time on your own, and I may want to talk it through. We need to think about what do we need, what might the other person need, and how can we resolve that.

Just to conclude, emotions are part of us, and there can be temptations to try to put them aside or push them down. In some circumstances, that may be the best response. In other cases, we may do that to the detriment of our conversation—to the detriment of our relationship. So, we want to find ways to bring them into the conversation—and rather than acting them out, just describe them.

Okay, so those are some thoughts. Good luck with your difficult conversations and your strong emotions.