It's natural to feel bruised when you trip over a bump in the road. A bad performance review stings. A botched project bulldozes your confidence. Micromanagement makes you feel microscopic on the corporate ladder.
But conflict is guaranteed in the working world (and life). And if your emotional response – getting defensive, depressed, angry – distracts you from your work, you'll both derail your performance and potentially taint your image. "Successful people aren't perfect, but they know how to manage their emotions," says Andrea Kay, career consultant and author of “Work’s a Bitch and then You Make it Work: 6 Steps to Go From Pissed Off to Powerful.”
As David Reiss, a psychiatrist based in San Diego, puts it: "The most valued employees are the ones that can handle conflict and resolve it."
[Read: The 5 Things You Must Know About Yourself as an Employee.]
To help you resolve conflict like a champ – sans passive aggressiveness or tears – follow the expert tips below:
Know thyself. You're innovative in brainstorming meetings, and you're enthusiastic as a team player. Good to know. Equally important to understand: You get defensive when peppered with questions about your project's status, and you tend to perceive critiques as personal attacks. Whew. Glad we got that out there.
Being conscious of both your strengths and your Achilles' heel – "that button that gets pushed that makes you crumble and feel bad about yourself," as Kay puts it – will help you control your emotions in and outside the workplace.
Ask yourself, "What gets under my skin and why?" to strengthen your "awareness muscle," Kay says. You could even keep a journal to track the times your panic button has been pushed and how you reacted. Or if you're really brave, ask a close friend or colleague to point out these situations. Maybe you don't realize how passive aggressive (or flat-out aggressive) you get in meetings when given constructive feedback.
When you identify these blind spots, you're more likely to react out of logic rather than emotion next time. (Think: I know I get stressed when my colleagues ask me so many questions about my project's progress because they make me feel like I'm not good at my job. But really, they're probably just asking questions because they care about the project.)
If you never step back and you only see a narrow interpretation of the situation – they're asking questions because they think I'm an idiot! – you react out of emotion. Cue the eye rolls, defensiveness, anger, tears. But whatever the case, "if your emotion is running you, you've lost control," Kay says.
Prepare and practice. Now that you're aware of what gets to you, practice how you'll react to it. Maybe deep breathing calms you, or perhaps it's a five-minute walk, a cup of tea, a scroll through Instagram, some seated yoga, a text to your sibling or a little Kenny G. Everyone is different, so choose what works for you to get grounded.
Don't wait until you're upset to find an effective stress neutralizer, says Beverly Flaxington, author of "Self-Talk for a Calmer You" and adjunct professor of leadership and social responsibility at Suffolk University in Boston. That's like waiting until the Olympics to learn your sport. Try a few de-stressing exercises when the pressure is off, and practice them. So next time you start to feel yourself getting overly emotional or stressed, you know to start taking deep breaths or cue the smooth jazz.
[Read: The Best Cures for Workplace Stress.]
Expect mistakes and criticism. Some tough love from Kay: "In the workplace, you're going to be criticized, you're going to be judged and your performance will be rated," she says. "There will be lots of challenging moments, and you're going to make mistakes." Sound bleak? Here's how to get by: "Make peace with the notion that you can't control anything besides your own reaction to others and to your mistakes," she says. Speaking of reactions ...
Don't beat yourself up. "Reasonably self-criticize, but avoid self-punishment," Reiss says. Say you made a mistake – not a screw-up big enough to get you fired – but a mistake nonetheless. "If you catch yourself really putting yourself down as a person or in terms of your abilities, step back and see it as a learning experience," he says. No, you're not an idiot for letting that typo slip into the big report. (And your boss isn't a monster for pointing it out.) But next time you'll proofread the report a few more times, right?
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