Neutralizing Disagreements

Working as part of a project team can be a very emotional experience. There can be a lot of examples of other people seeing things in a way that’s different from how you see them. And this dynamic can create pretty commonly an experience of defensiveness where the other person believes that you made a mistake and it can be very easy to jump into defensive mode which kind of increases the temperature and increases the volume in the conversation. I want to encourage you to do something very conceptually simple but not necessarily easy when you’re in a situation like that. The thing I want to suggest that you do is stay quiet and listen. Listen to what the other person says. They may not be saying what you are worried that they’re saying. They may not be as extreme as you imagine they are being. Listen to the words that they say. Listen to how they’re feeling and do what you can to communicate it back before you go into your perspective on things. It can be incredibly valuable to just communicate to the other person that you understand how they’re feeling and what they’re saying. You don’t want to accuse them of feeling anything that they’re not feeling and you don’t want to accuse them of saying anything that they’re not saying. So try to be as accurate as you possibly can and see if you can actually be empathetic. See if you can understand it from their perspective and communicate that you understand it from their perspective before you jump into your perspective and shift things into your language. Give that a shot and see how effective it can be at lowering the temperature or keeping things from raising unnecessarily. [Music]