No matter your industry or role—or whether you’re 100% remote or work in-person—we bet you’ve had some tense and awkward situations at work.
This can happen with colleagues or customers alike, and could include:
- Working on a team with one person who doesn’t meet deadlines
- Disagreeing on the next steps in a meeting
- Differential treatment from management
- Personal differences or disagreements
- Misaligned expectations and outcomes
There’s no way to completely avoid situations like this, but you can definitely learn to handle them in an effective and productive way.
Here are a few ways to turn tense situations into positive outcomes.
Focus on your emotions
The first step is to focus internally.
Consider what’s going on with you and your emotions. You might be feeling frustrated, angry, upset, or disappointed. It’s important to first take stock of your own feelings and emotionally regulate them. This way you can enter a conversation with a controlled sense of calm and professionalism.
When you feel negative emotions rise because of a tense work situation, try to:
- Take a few deep breaths to actively calm your body and mind.
- Go somewhere to gather your thoughts and feelings. Creating a calm workspace can make a huge impact on your emotions and provide a space to process things.
- Acknowledge how you’re feeling and validate your emotions.
By doing this first step, you can better determine your next steps. Perhaps going through your own emotions is enough to help you deal with the situation. More often than not, though, a conversation will be needed to clear the air with your colleague(s).
Focus on the environment
After you’ve gotten a handle on your emotions, you need to remember your environment. Remember that this is a workplace situation—you are not with friends or family. Your manager and other colleagues are also affected by tension in the team, so you want to handle it professionally.
Another aspect of the environment is literally where you are working—i.e. in-person or virtually. Remote work often requires different communication traits to be successful.
There are a few things to remember:
- Productive, clear, and effective conversations do NOT happen over text messages or email. You need to talk in person or on the phone to find any resolution.
- When in-person, speak to people in a neutral, private setting.
- You can ask for a manager or HR representative to be present if the situation warrants it.
Focus on listening, then speaking
It’s not just about having the right words to say. It’s equally important to actively listen and have open body language.
Tense work situations usually arise because of some kind of misunderstanding. Therefore, to clear things up, you need to truly understand what the other person is saying.
Active listening involves:
- Letting them speak without interrupting.
- Showing in your body language that you are engaged and listening.
- Asking open-ended questions with curiosity and humility to hear their perspective.
After you’ve listened, then you can speak.
Try to:
- Thank them for sharing with you.
- Focus on the main points you want to communicate. You don’t need to re-hash everything, but just the main tension points.
- Leave emotion out of it—it’s not bad to be emotional, of course, but it can confuse your message if you let it take over.
Focus on the outcome
At the end of the day, you need to continue to work with your colleagues. Tense work situations can continue to simmer and get worse if they aren’t addressed. So, make sure you speak up and resolve any issue that’s impacting your work.
When entering a tough conversation, focus on the outcome. Ask yourself:
- Who needs to be involved in this conversation?
- Do I need to escalate things to my manager or HR?
- What is the goal at the end of the conversation?
- What impact does my language and response have on our working relationship?
The goal is to have a positive and productive outcome. Keep that in mind as you move forward and navigate tense situations at work.
It’s never fun having to deal with tension or conflict! But if you work towards creating a positive outcome, it can be a productive exercise and actually help you build stronger work relationships.
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