Workplace Wellbeing: Keeping a cool head in hot situations 

Engaging with a difficult colleague or customer can be challenging, but by adopting expert strategies you can stay calm and diffuse the situation, writes Sharon Ní Chonchúir

Pic: iStock

Dealing with volatile tempers is part of the daily routine for employees like Claire*.

“I’m a nurse and I used to have a colleague who was a senior doctor,” she says. “Emotions can run high in our line of work and when he was under stress, he’d become aggressive in his demeanour.

“He’d start shouting and throwing medical instruments at me and others. I couldn’t walk out as I was the patient’s advocate in that situation, so I just put up and shut up.”

This doctor wasn’t the only one who took his frustrations out on her. “I don’t work with him anymore, but I still deal with irate patients and their family members,” says Claire. “And being shouted at isn’t the worst of it. I have colleagues who have been physically assaulted. One even had to give up work because she was so badly injured.”

Today is Workplace Wellness Day, but there are lots of people who aren’t safe in their place of work. A recent survey by the filling station operator Circle K interviewed 380 employees and 500 others from the broader retail sector and found that 83% had experienced some form of abuse from customers.

Like Claire, staff in the health sector can also come under attack. According to figures released by the HSE in January, there were 50,050 assaults on staff in the past five years, including 39,587 physical assaults, 274 sexual assaults and 10,189 verbal ones.

Claire thinks things have become worse since the pandemic. “People are much more impatient,” she says. “Maybe there’s still pent-up anger because of covid and it’s coming out as aggression. So many people seem to be spoiling for a fight.”

Coping strategies

Your workplace may not be as fraught as Claire’s but there are techniques we can all use when dealing with conflict at work. There are steps we can follow to stay safe while dealing with stressed colleagues or angry customers.

Niamh Fitzpatrick is the organisation and workplace sector lead for the Mediators’ Institute of Ireland. When emotions escalate, she advises hitting the pause button, if possible. “When a row of any kind erupts, people tend to meet like with like,” she says. “If one person raises their voice, the other person does too. If one uses aggressive body language, the other mirrors that language and the situation can quickly get out of hand. Stepping back allows us to stop, think, and control our reactions to what’s happening.

“We have no power over what the other person does,” she says. “Our only power is over our own role within the conflict.”

The next step to consider is to engage in active listening. Ms Fitzpatrick gives the example of a customer who is furious because she discovered a dress she had bought to wear to her brother’s wedding had a tear in it. “Active listening involves empathising without taking blame,” she says. 

“It’s about reflecting that you have heard what the other person has said. ‘That dress had a tear so you couldn’t wear it to your brother’s wedding — that must have been so disappointing for you.’ Hearing those words should make that customer feel understood, which should calm [the person] down and de-escalate the situation.”

Asserting boundaries

Daniel Manning formerly worked in the Irish Naval Service and is now a consultant to whatifsafety.com, a personal safety and awareness programme designed to prepare people for the everyday conflict they might encounter in the workplace.

“When people find themselves in difficult situations, they tend to either freeze or panic, neither of which is helpful,” says Mr Manning. “Our programme involves teaching people strategies they can follow in those situations and role-playing them so that they feel more confident and empowered the next time they experience conflict.”

He suggests a simple strategy for dealing with a client or customer who is verbally abusive. “The trick is not to get emotional. These people don’t know you, so you shouldn’t take their behaviour personally. Remembering that should help you to stay calm in the moment.”

If a colleague is shouting or using derogatory language, he recommends asserting boundaries. “Tell them that you won’t be spoken to like that and ask them to please stop,” says Mr Manning. “If they continue, tell them that you won’t respond while they are shouting at you and suggest that you revisit the situation when you’re both calm. Try to remain in control of your emotions as roaring back at someone will only make the situation worse.”

Another of the strategies he teaches is one he calls LEAP.

“L stands for listening and hearing what the other person has to say,” he says. “E is for empathising and letting the other person know that you have heard them, perhaps nodding your head and saying that you understand that they are frustrated. “A” is for asking questions and drawing out more information. Often, once the person has the chance to tell you their story, they will de-escalate themselves and start to feel and behave more calmly. Finally, ”P” is for paraphrasing, where you repeat what they have said back to them, and they feel reassured that they have been heard.”

Learning from experience

Because we are imperfect humans, we don’t always remember to use such strategies in the heat of the moment. Instead of reacting calmly when confronted with conflict, our defences can go up and the situation can spin out of control, with everyone involved losing their tempers.

If this happens, Ms Fitzpatrick urges you to learn from the experience. “Go back over it in your head,” she says. “Ask yourself how you behaved, how you felt and how you reacted. If you’re satisfied with yourself, fair enough. But if your behaviour had a negative outcome, ask yourself if you have the ability to do something differently next time to alter that outcome.”

You may realise that your actions hurt the other person’s feelings. If so, acknowledging that could help both of you reconcile and move on. “I don’t necessarily advise people to apologise as apologies are so personal,” says Ms Fitzpatrick. “Some people say sorry, and others don’t. Some people accept apologies, and others don’t. They prefer to draw a line and move on. But acknowledging wrongdoing and recognising that your actions had an impact on the other person can be a pivotal moment. When people feel seen and heard, it can change the course of the conversation.”

Claire recently attended one of Mr Manning’s programmes and as a result, has adopted a different approach to dealing with conflict in her place of work. “That doctor affected me more than I realised, knocking my self-esteem,” she says. “In hindsight, if I’d spoken to him afterwards and empathised by telling him that I understood he was under pressure but asserted myself by saying that I didn’t like how he had spoken to me, it could have made a difference. At least I now have the confidence and tools to deal with such situations if I ever come across them again.”

• *Name has been changed