How to Manage Workplace Stressors with Tough Love | Entrepreneur

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

My daughter came home upset one day when she was 16 and started yelling at us as soon as she stepped in the door. She went up to her bedroom soon after. My wife asked if I was going to let her talk to us that way — and I said that I was.

It wasn’t because I appreciated the outburst — because I didn’t. But I knew how she felt. We’ve all been in similar moments when the strength of our emotions outweighs our capacity to regulate them. It may be more common when we’re young, but I’ve seen it happen to plenty of adults as well. And while I didn’t like the delivery of the message, I recognized that it was coming from a heartfelt place.

Tantrums are rarely pleasant, but they can teach us important lessons if we can bring ourselves to look past the anger and examine the root cause. In this article, I’m going to show you how I do that at home and at FutureFund, the company I started to provide free fundraising software for K-12 schools. Use what you learn here to navigate workplace conflict with more grace and achieve better results for your business.

Criticism takes courage

I didn’t like the way my daughter raised her objection with me, but I also saw that doing so was extremely important to her. My daughter is an intelligent young woman, and she rarely cares so deeply about things that don’t matter. So, it would have been a mistake to dismiss the validity of her complaint just because I didn’t appreciate the style.

For one thing, leaders who insist that all feedback be sugar-coated tend to be fragile and surround themselves with sycophants. That means they learn less and are more prone to acting on bad information. So it’s better to say the right thing in the wrong way than it is to say nothing.

For another, it takes a lot of courage to criticize someone you depend on — whether it’s your parent or your boss. When you recognize that courage, you teach people around you to be transparent. When you dismiss it, they learn to bottle up, and your relationship suffers.

So the next day, I went to my daughter and told her I appreciated her sharing—but that I had some advice for helping her communicate more clearly in the future. Because when she yells, all I hear is the volume of her voice, and I actually want to hear her concerns.

Remain calm and ask questions

It might feel natural to yell back, to fight fire with fire — but as a leader or a parent, you don’t want to do that. You always want to remain calm, because even when people are angry with you, they’re still using you as an example of leadership.

That’s why I recommend asking questions to resolve conflicts. Not only is it more effective, but it models behavior that you want your team — and your children — to practice. This can help them solve future problems before they get out of hand.

The most important question you can ask when a person is upset with you is: why? What’s behind it?

You can’t always do this directly — although sometimes you can. But often, you’ll have to ask about specific failures because some kind of failure is almost always the root cause of an outburst.

Sometimes, the person is self-conscious about their own perceived failure, like a high schooler who’s angry about failing a test or not making a team. Other times, it’s about the perceived failure of others — like an employee who feels let down by a teammate or a leadership decision. But if you identify the failure that led to these feelings, you can almost always learn from it and come out stronger on the other side.

Failure can be an opportunity instead of a setback

The best way to treat failure is as a chance to gather new information and improve your processes. This gives rise to more important questions: what did you learn, and how can it help you going forward?

Think of it this way: if you don’t learn from your mistakes, what’s the point of going through them? That’s what I constantly tell the student-athletes I coach.

When I’m teaching someone to swing a bat for the first time, there are about 10 different things I can work with them on, from their feet to their hips to their hands to the placement of their head. But the most important piece of advice I can give them is not to set the bar too high.

Their goal on those first 10 swings shouldn’t be to hit a home run; it should be to consistently get their feet in the right position. That way, they’re not failing over and over again, which can lead to frustration and conflict. Instead, they’re succeeding at getting better. When you can redefine what success is, you won’t experience failure.

Say you’re cooking, and you put your spoon in the spaghetti sauce to taste it. If it needs more salt, do you immediately think you’re a failure and throw the whole thing out? No — you just add more salt.

You should expect things to be off a little before you fine-tune them. Needing to fine-tune doesn’t mean you’re not a good cook; it’s just part of your process. So when you and your team can get honest about identifying failures, there’s less reason for anyone to be upset about them. Instead, you take a potential conflict and turn it into something all of you can work together to solve. That’s a real recipe for success.

Source link