Coming in hot
Every call with my client Dan (not his actual name) starts the same way.
“Dan,” I ask, “how would you like to use our time today?”
“I’m really struggling here,” Dan responds, the urgency in his voice rising steadily. “Our business is a mess, our pipeline is dry, leadership seems clueless, and I’ve about had it with working from home...oh, and my friend just had a health scare and my doctor told me that my own health is at risk if I can’t manage my stress, and.....”
As a coach I make very few requests of my clients but one of them is to come to each call with a topic in mind. If we have less than an hour together it’s best not to spend most of it defining the focus for our conversation.
But sometimes we can’t just get down to business, as is often the case with Dan.
You may have experienced something similar with members of your team, or even with your own clients. They arrive at a meeting coming in hot, already revved up about something that’s been bothering them.
Typically, agitation, frustration, and anger - any emotion, really - are messengers of an underlying need, representatives of something that is not being understood or acknowledged. To paraphrase expert mediator Tammy Lenski, “understand the emotion’s real message and the messenger can leave.”
So, how do you do this?
First, recognize that your autonomic response is to get agitated yourself (thanks to mirror neurons, which are exactly what you think they are) as you forcefully try to calm the other person down. But when you fight fire with fire, well, you know how that ends up.
Instead, take a deep breath to calm yourself and then get curious about what is not being said. The following kinds of inquiries can help draw it out:
“Things sound pretty rough right now. What do you most need from me?”
What’s the most important thing I need to know/we need to discuss?”
“I’m not sure I totally get what you’re saying. What am I missing?”
It's almost impossible to have a productive conversation with someone who is upset, at least not until their nervous system has been soothed and the energy diffused (this is also why it’s impossible to give feedback or offer solutions to someone who is upset).
What would be possible if you could manage conversations when someone is coming in hot? What if members of your team could do it as well?