How to handle angry opponent-main classic strategy

by chess master on 07/02/10 at 7:13 pm

Intro­duc­tion

We all face anger. It’s a basic feel­ing when some­thing went wrong, broke and the feel­ing of frus­tra­tion grip­ing you and even­tu­ally you take it our at some­one or he takes it out on you. It can pop up in our work­ing time and in our pri­vate life. Anger can come with dif­fer­ent forms such as yelling, shout­ing, sar­casm, resent and more.

 

A com­mon sit­u­a­tion for the office employer is when an angry fel­low, mem­ber of the staff or super­vi­sor, or a cus­tomer use his anger on you. It can be by an angry phone call or burst­ing to you office. Rarely have you the time to pre­pare your­self to it, but you should.

 

One thing must be remem­bered that most of the times you are not the tar­get, but you must bear the brunt of the emo­tions of onslaught.

 

As an office sur­vivor you can pre­pare and even “train” your­self to this sit­u­a­tion. So, we decide to bring sev­eral tips for the office sur­vival. The tips will show stuff like:

• How should You respond to anger (Do you become confused?defensive?disoriented?are you always tempted to return anger with more anger?)
• What best char­ac­ter­is­tic you should have at these sit­u­a­tion such as  self con­trol, calm­ness , assertiveness
• How to present a sin­cere desire to solve what­ever prob­lem has caused the outburst.

Make sure to imme­di­ately acknowl­edge the fact that the per­sons is angry

Don’t make the com­mon mis­take of not acknowl­edge the prob­lem. Noth­ing adds more fuel to the fire of anger then to have it brushed aside, ignored or challenged.

Anger is a symp­tom of a greater prob­lem so make it clear imme­di­ately that you real­izes the per­son is upset. The moment you are con­fronted by anger say some­thing like:

I can see that this is impor­tant to you-so it’s impor­tant to me too. Let’s go and have a talk about it

By say­ing that, you are send­ing 2 mes­sages in fact:

• It says that you are inter­ested in help­ing with the problem.
• It makes clear that you are not going to com­bat rage with rage.

The all exer­cise is to say a sup­port­ive and calm­ness com­ment that will not con­done the anger but will direct the emo­tion constructively.

Stay cool, calm and have full con­fi­dent in yourself

This advice applies to all sit­u­a­tions where fear involves.

The impor­tant thing to remem­ber is to:

• Remain calm, dig­ni­fied, and express con­fi­dence in your face and body language.
• Speak with steady voice that says you are con­cerned but not intimidated.

It’s vital to not to respond aggres­sively to another’s per­son anger. If faced with shout­ing and pro­fan­ity, draw a line and say some­thing like:

I have no inten­tion of rais­ing my voice dur­ing our dis­cus­sion and I ask that you extend the same cour­tesy to me.

Remem­ber to say it with­out a smile and with fierce look in your eyes , and steady voice .

This will takes all the hot air from that per­son right away.

To shout or to cool?

Your aim is to cool of the fire-means solv­ing the prob­lem fast and clean. so our first tac­tic will be either to out­shout them or mak­ing a low voice discussion.

Out­shout them

yes, this tac­tic can be used when you are in sit­u­a­tion of feel­ing that the war has begun and the shout­ing is the bat­tle. the war begun earlier,and the con­fronta­tion is inevitable, thus you don’t want to cool the other per­son, but the opposite-you want to shout back. this way other employee means you are not being intim­i­dated other word you got “balls” and that they must start think­ing with whom they are align­ing them­selves. do hope you are as pop­u­lar as you think , when using this tac­tic. try to radio tape the “dis­cus­sion” and while shout­ing back, try to enter some “gam­bits” ques­tion that will make him fall. you have some advan­tage in this sit­u­a­tion because the other per­son don’t know you are act­ing to make him look more bad then he is.

Cool the steam

This tac­tic is the oppo­site on the one men­tion above. remem­ber that  the search for a solu­tion can only begin in a non threat­en­ing envi­ron­ment, so move any con­fronta­tion to a pri­vate set­ting. ask the per­son where would he like to talk or sug­gest either your office or some dis­cus­sion room which will be neu­tral .get the per­son seated .go and bring to cups of cool water and drink together. if the your office was selected, Come out from behind your desk and sit as the same zone. this  less for­mal set­ting will help the other per­son to cool off because he under­stand you are not act­ing supe­rior to him but as equal. the next sec­tions are con­tin­u­a­tion of this decision.

Hard part action –Lis­ten to what the per­son has to say

after the envi­ron­ment was made more “relaxed” let the,him get it all out before you start respond­ing. remem­ber to main­tain eye con­tact all the time and lis­ten actively with­out say­ing any­thing. the angry per­son will run out of steam much sooner(its not easy to keep yelling at some­one who doesn’t respond).By let­ting the per­son get it off the chest, you are going a long way towards defus­ing a volatile situation.(this as some excep­tion thou when deal­ing with fam­ily rel­a­tives rather then work­ing employ­ees or customers)

start ask­ing  questions.

now that the other per­son is talk­ing in the right deci­bels and his  anger is wear­ing off , try to look for the real prob­lem. remem­ber that most angry per­sons will not be hon­est about. why they are angry for,

You may need to ask plenty of questions-you’re now mov­ing the dis­cus­sion to the real issue. to do so, here are some points to use:

the impor­tant thing is to focus on facts. Peo­ple often get more and more angry because they are con­fused as well as dis­ap­pointed. the more you and your angry oppo­nent focus on cold, hard facts, the less you will get caught up in red hot emo­tions. you will get less stressed and you will have hap­pier oppo­nent sooner.

while talk­ing about the facts, write them down, so you will be able it use them at any moment dur­ing the dis­cus­sion, with­out going back and for­ward because you don’t remem­ber them. after all, you weren’t pre­pared for this bat­tle so, use it to help you go thought the process. you are in defen­sive mode, so you need to sur­vive it, more then win­ning it.

Sum­ma­rize for time to time the the sit­u­a­tion as you see it. and make sure your oppo­nent is agree­ing with you. at any point were there is non agree­ment , try to clar­ify things , lets him cor­rect  and add as much infor­ma­tion and make more gen­eral sum­ma­rize state­ment that he will need to agree at the end.

Work tor­wards a solution

A non break­able rule to remem­ber when try­ing to come with a solu­tion is not to dis­cuss it if your oppo­nent still didn’t cooled off. if he is still angry , post­pone the dis­cus­sion to another time, but make sure he under­stand you are not try­ing to avoid it, but rather you want him in his best think­ing and while he is angry he cant bring his good ideas. use you office pol­i­tics skills to pass on this message.

if the per­son has cooled off dur­ing the process we described so far and you have acted calmly ‚lis­tened to all he had to say„asked as many ques­tions as you could , you are now able to sug­gest sev­eral solu­tions and explore them with your non angry person.

Finally , agree on the solu­tion that meets your mutual needs as fully as pos­si­ble within the bounds of any exist­ing constraints.

Act as the solution

• if your oppo­nent is a cus­tomer and the orga­ni­za­tion or you are  to blame– admit it. Apol­o­gize and assure the per­son that it will not hap­pen again.
• if the other party is in the wrong, be firm in stat­ing this with­out overreaching.
• if another per­son is involved, state your inten­tion to gather fur­ther infor­ma­tion before decid­ing on any action. Indi­cate that you will advise later of your decision.

Above all ‚demon­strate fair­ness and an inter­est in the per­son and the problem.

At the end– always Express appreciation

as an office sur­vivor, play it safe and use the golden rule of off good man­ners. Thank the other party for shar­ing the prob­lem with you and guar­an­tee your con­tin­u­ing interest,concern and inten­tion to use the opin­ions that were talked about in the future.

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