Hi Zena, Members of my team have been shouted at by angry customers recently. It’s nothing they’ve done wrong; these people just seem to think they can take out their bad mood on us. We are well trained, but some people have been upset over it. I’ve given them advice on how to rise above it, but it doesn’t seem to help ‘ |
| Thanks to AC in the insurance industry for this email. It seems to be an increasingly angry world. Last week I was sworn at when doing a voluntary shift on a helpline. It was far more vicious than the standard effing and jeffing I’ve become accustomed to. My local bookshop owner told me someone let rip to her staff over a trivial delayed order. Research by Professor Christine Porath at Georgetown University found that 98% of us experience ‘incivility’ at work to some degree. This can be micro aggressions like snide emails, disrespectful conversations, or full-on threats of violence. We can shrug it off, up to a point. The stress bucket model explains our different levels of tolerance. We all carry different loads of stress at different times. An event that we find very stressful might not even register on someone else’s radar. However, resilience fluctuates depending on what else is going on in our lives. If we are struggling with family or relationship problems, financial worries or illness, one seemingly minor work stressor can tip us over the edge. The World Health Organisation reports that one in seven children between the ages of ten to nineteen experiences a mental health disorder. Their normally resilient parents won’t have many reserves left to deal with arseholes at work. Managers need to be sensitive to these vulnerabilities under pressure and not be surprised by an uncharacteristic reaction when people are less thick-skinned than usual. Name the feeling to tame the feeling When we are upset by something, it helps enormously to say so: to be asked how we are feeling and to have those feelings acknowledged. That’s what I needed last week. I didn’t need advice or a debrief, I just needed what I got: someone to ask how I was and to speak to them about how the call made me feel. My feelings were validated, I was listened to. It only took a couple of minutes. I processed it, then got back on the phone. Think about your last bad day. Did you want to talk about it and get it off your chest? Or did you want someone to tell you how they would have handled it better? Most likely you wanted someone to ask how you were and allow you to talk about how you felt. You didn’t want advice and AC, if someone hasn’t taken your advice, I’m afraid it’s probably because they didn’t want it. Here’s some thoughts on how to be more supportive: 1. Get to know the person behind the mask How well do you know your team – the real people behind the professional work face? What’s really going on in their lives? Who might bring this stuff home with them and allow it to fester? We are messy humans, not robots. We bring our past experiences to work and these shape our current relationships and behaviour. I don’t mean that we should Share Our Truth Authentically. We just need to find a little time to get to know each other better. What are the events in people’s backstory or private life that might cause their emotional response to bad behaviour? People vary in their attitude to authority figures for example. An aggressive person can bring up uncomfortable memories. Someone with a more secure base may find it easier to shake off an unpleasant encounter and move on. Don’t make assumptions. They aren’t you. Spend more pockets of time with them when you can. Gradually build up a picture of the whole person, so you can empathise with them and understand their perspective better. Listen to how they feel and don’t try to fix them. You and I are paid to solve business problems, but emotional problems don’t need fixing. The upset person wants an empathetic ear, not a solution. Your 2025 mantra is: feel it, don’t fix it. When your system goes down, you need a solution. You don’t need to discuss how you feel about it. When you have a people or emotional problem, you absolutely want to unpack it and discuss how it makes you feel. Perhaps not immediately, personally I like to retreat to a cave for a bit, but once you’ve had time to recharge. Listening properly is hard, it’s much easier to dole out advice. Crazy busyness has crowded out proper conversations. Here’s some listening tips: Do: Aim to validate their feelings and make them feel heard. Tell them that you’ve noticed what happened and ask them how they are feeling. Get them to open up by using coaching skills: the reflecting, clarifying and summarising skills on the listening wheel. Arrange to talk later if you can’t give them your undivided attention now. Get comfortable with silence. There is no need to fill the gap. Offer advice only if it would be negligent not to. Don’t: Expect them to trust you if you’ve never really listened to them before. They’ll think you are just ticking boxes. Overstep their boundaries by digging for emotions that they don’t want to talk about. They are under no obligation to share their thoughts with you. Dispute their version of events, like gushing ‘that’s ridiculous, of course you are amazing at what you do’. You’ll just annoy them, so hold back. Challenge a negative mindset gently, with facts: ‘how many times have you done the same task with excellent feedback?’ Bring it back to you. ‘You think you’ve got problems?! Let me tell you what I have to deal with’. |