Hey can I talk to you for a sec sure
What's up Explearners this is the second installment of our five-part miniseries
about communication conundrums how to deal with them when they happen and how
to prevent them from happening our goal is to prevent them when we can and deal
with them when we need to today's communication conundrum is dealing with
a workplace confrontation let's be real explainers work confrontations happen
they're not pretty they're not fun they do happen and they're not always
avoidable so when they do happen we want you to be able to go to your
communication toolkit choose the strategies you need and repair what you
need to so that you can communicate with confidence authenticity and poise that's
why we're here also you had a confrontation at work it happens it's
gonna be okay I promise in light of our theme about taking responsibility for
our communication and their outcomes we are going to take responsibility and do
the following let's have a look at the strategies strategy number one don't
make it about you it's so easy to just take something
personally especially when were confronted with an angry interlocutor
they're confronting you after all right so the immediate thought that we have is
they have an issue with me they think I'm this that or the other I'm their
problem guess what explainers you're not their
problem the reality is that a lot of people walk around with baggage and
sometimes people will be frustrated and they'll take their frustrations out on
you and sometimes you're just they're punching bag and it's not okay
especially if this is becoming more of a recurrent theme in your life or in their
life in that situation but you also have to remember that we're
all human and these things do happen so instead of taking it personally you say
okay I think that person is having a rough day I'm gonna be as kind as I can
to them and I'm gonna do the strategies that I'm about to give you okay that's a
healthier way of confronting the confrontation and dealing with it with
confidence authenticity and poised right explorers there's so much more than
meets the eye you have no idea what's going on in their personal lives so just
think of it as a bigger picture situation okay and that's why we don't
take these things personally now there are some circumstances that do you call
for pointing you out as the problem now there could be a scenario where you are
the issue in which case they probably would voice that and they would give you
valid reasons for believing so right and so I'm not saying that maybe they just
don't like you and they don't really know why maybe you too loudly maybe you
just get under their skin and they can't tell you why that's still their issue
right so that's not about you but in a scenario where it is about you then
that's a separate issue right and that would be a different video it's beyond
the scope of what we're talking about today we're talking about somebody
lashing out on you they have a confrontation with you and we are giving
you strategies to deal with this kind of communication conundrum the second
strategy is talking it out face to face now after a confrontation happens you
want to avoid rushing to your email sending out an email in haste or going
to your phone and texting the person that will just make matters worse you
don't want to use modes of communication where there is lack of nonverbals
nonverbals are really powerful because we can see the emotion we can see what
the person is doing in their communication that we don't get from an
email or a text message sometimes the root cause of these types
of confrontations is due to a inability to see eye-to-eye about something so
sometimes it's just about talking it out in person
to figure out what the issue is and then to get to the bottom of that issue right
so when a confrontation transpires you want to talk to that person face-to-face
this is essential to resolving the issue and to remedy the problem because again
you have the emotions that you can use and the nonverbals that can help disarm
the person who's overheating and who's angry and frustrated going to your phone
or to email and using emojis which you wouldn't even use in a workplace
environment would not be the best way to go about things
so you designate a time to meet that person in a face-to-face meeting and try
to meet in a neutral setting meaning make sure that it's a neutral territory
so that you really show that you are on an even playing field you're not meeting
in their office you're not meeting in your office you're booking a private
meeting room you're finding some communal space that's private so that
you can really dive deep into the resolution part of this whole thing you
can even go to a nearby coffee shop at that face-to-face meeting you call out
the pink elephant in the room sometimes it might be obvious as to why the person
confronted you in the first place other times it won't be obvious in which case
you'll have to ask have I done something to upset you what have I done to make
you this angry things like that so that you can actually get to the bottom of
things all right literally calling out the pink elephant in the room the most
important thing with this when you have a face-to-face meeting that you go in
with a positive attitude and with the sole goal of coming to a resolution
you're not going there to tell them off you're not going in there to make them
feel worse than they already are especially if they're just having a bad
day and they took it out on you you were going there with the positive mindset
and a constructive mindset so that you can actually fix the issue and make it
so that it might not ever happen again right and that is ultimately what we
want using these strategies to prevent these communication conundrums from
happening to begin with but the third strategy is to call a team meeting
now you could do this one of two ways you could either have this meeting be in
lieu of the face-to-face meeting that we talked about in strategy 2 or you could
do it after the in-person meeting so that it would be strategy 3 right so you
first have a face-to-face meeting then you call a team meeting now I'm gonna
leave this up to you because in some cases you might be in a position of
power where you do call together a meeting let's say you have people a team
that you're running or you're leading a department or running some other sort of
group you might find it appropriate to first have a meeting with everyone and
then talk to the person after I personally would advise you to have that
face-to-face meeting first with the person which is why it's strategy 2 and
then do this strategy strategy 3 they call the meeting together and the reason
being is that if you don't really know what's going on with that person and why
they confronted you to begin with then you might feel defensive and tempted to
call that person out and humiliate them even in a joking way or a self-effacing
way but that is detrimental to repairing the relationship and to getting to the
bottom of the confrontation so I do not advise that obviously what I do advise
is to first clear the air with the person privately so that you can then
address the whole team and not even call out that person that would not be
something you do here but what you would do is use that as a teachable moment so
that you can address the issue let's say the person lashed out on you the
confrontation because of a time management issue that they had maybe
they couldn't meet the deadline and they felt frustrated and they took it out on
you because they said that you set unrealistic expectations that they
couldn't meet now without even talking about the confrontation you had because
that's private and you resolve that in the face-to-face private meeting with
that person instead what you take to the meeting when you call the meeting is
bringing a teachable moment about you know if
there's an issue with time management that person will talk to the team leader
the department head ahead of time before it's too late before they're running
into issues right so as it's as simple as communicating that to the person also
what would you have in the team meeting point of the team meeting would be to
communicate needs and to do goal-setting a framework that I like to use for goal
setting and objective setting is the smart framework so S stands for specific
you want your objectives to be specific M is measurable a is attainable R is
relevant T is time-bound so in this meeting you are setting your
objectives to make sure that everyone is on the same page number four find a
win-win situation now this would be ideal
right so you had a confrontation now you try to figure out what the win-win
situation would be for you and for your interlocutor right so a story that I
love and I my father would tell it to us growing up is about it's the orange
story that's how I fondly refer to it now imagine two people want an orange
person a wants an orange because they actually want to eat the fruit person B
just wants the rind so just the zest the peel that they can use for cooking let's
say they're baking a cake so that's what they want but to the bystander or if
that's not communicated what they actually want it might just seem like
both parties want an orange and there's only one orange uh-oh
communication conundrum so what do we do well let's say person a shared with
person B that they just want the fruit they're gonna eat that orange because
they need to get their vitamin C that day person B maybe communicated that
they're going to make a delicious orange cake and they need the zest only
now if these two people just communicate what they actually want why they want
that orange then that's a win-win situation person a gets the whole fruit
person B gets the whole zest if they don't communicate and they just say I
want an orange I want an orange too all right well we both want an orange
let's just cut it down the middle you have half I have half now that's a good
scenario it's a good outcome but it's not the ideal outcome for neither party
right because person a would just get half a fruit person B would just get
half the zest and then the rest would go to waste on both sides so instead what
you do is you communicate your needs people aren't mind reader's now you have
to be able to communicate what you need and what you want so that people can
understand how they can help you keep in mind this orange story because this is
the way you're going to be able to find a win-win on both sides simply by
communicating your needs number five get a Batna you may or may not have heard of
this term before but it is a term coined by the authors of a great book called
getting to yes and it's about negotiations so I can dive deeper into
Batna in a separate video but today I'm just going to share a few main takeaways
of what a Batna is and how to find your Batna now a Batna is used in
negotiations and what it stands for is a best alternative to a negotiated
agreement I know that's a mouthful but essentially it is what is your best next
alternative so in a situation where you weren't able to see eye to eye B
follow-up meeting didn't go so well not as well as you had hoped and you weren't
able to come to a win-win situation so what do you do you don't despair you
find a bet nut and pull that out that is your rabbit out of the magic hat trick
almost so how do you get to a bet now first you brainstorm so you write out
the possible actions that you could take if you're not able to come to an
agreement let's say you've already tried to come to an agreement and you cannot
find an agree then you would write out the possible
actions you can take so when you look at what you've written there you highlight
the three ideas that would make the most sense in terms of what you can actually
carry out in action so your action plan in other words so you come up with the
three ideas that you think you could actually do in real life in a sense of
it being most favorable to you and then you take those three ideas and you
narrow it down further by looking at the single most favorable option that you
can take action on and put into motion that Nizar powerful across any type of
negotiation this could be a job search this could be an interview it could be a
salary negotiation it could be figuring out ways of remedying a toxic work
culture any type of negotiation anytime you really need to figure out what your
best next alternative is go with a Batna number six framing it with I as you know
our theme here with these strategies across the multiple communication
conundrums that makes up this five-part miniseries is all about taking
responsibility for our actions for our communications and for the outcomes in
light of that theme we're talking about framing with I so instead of saying you
you you right we're pointing the finger that's blaming the person right so we
want to take responsibility so not only taking responsibility in our minds like
okay I'm gonna take responsibility for my actions you actually also verbalize
that to the person so that they know that you are showing that you're taking
responsibility instead of saying you did this you were late handing in that
report you didn't speak to the head of the department well you did this you did
that we avoid that kind of framing and instead we use I I felt that this was
irresponsible of the way we manage things I'd like to understand what
happened from your point of view I wasn't aware of the
fact that the team would be running late I right so showing the person that you
are responsible insofar as you understand what's going on in the
situation and of course they will flesh out the details for you so that you can
see eye to eye what have I done to cause you to feel this way right what have I
done I did something what did I do tell me
what do you believe I could have done differently I could have done
differently so the action rate is about you you took action you did something
this is a really powerful way of disarming the person who's angry
frustrated confrontational and getting to the bottom of the situation for
strategy seven and eight this has to do with active listening and empathetic
communication empathetic listening so there are two separate videos about
these I would highly recommend you and encourage you to watch those revisit
them I will link them below in the description box but in a nutshell what
we're talking about here is really being able to actively listen and
empathetically listen because you need to really hear the person in order to
resolve the issue why are they frustrated you need to pay attention to
not only what they're saying but how they're saying it using their tone of
voice their prosody their nonverbal communication and also their words right
so it's the whole package so you have to be attuned to their message and how
they're conveying it right and that comes with actively listening and
empathetically listening and these are really great ways of helping the person
figure out the issue and then resolving it and coming to a resolution together
let's quickly recap before we go today's communication conundrum is a workplace
confrontation the way that we dealt with this workplace confrontation is using
the eight strategies we outlined for you in this video today practice these
strategies try them out make them your own and then
be prepared to use them in the event of a confrontation it's not the end of the
world we all get frustrated we're human we lash out we take responsibility for
our actions and doing so will help us become a better communicator a more
effective communicator so that we can really do well in our business do well
in our relationships do well in life just being aware of these strategies is
not enough you really have to put them to use so that when a confrontation does
occur it's second nature to you you know what to do you know how to act
professionally and appropriately in that given context and that you're not in a
frenzy and trying to figure out what to do and falling back on old ways that is
not conducive to conflict resolution let's say but these eight strategies you
really have to practice make them your own practice them and have them in your
toolkit so that you're ready when the time comes don't wait before it's too
late all right Explearners that's a wrap on
this video I'm so glad you can join us today if you haven't subscribed please
do so that you can get all of our videos and make sure that you watch the other
installments of this five-part miniseries because we are going into
different communication conundrums and how to deal with them and prevent them
and we are looking forward to hearing from you send us your comment send us
your DM and I will see you in the next video Happy Explearning !