How to manage your emotions when you get push back

My clients tell me about many experiences that cause them anxiety when they have to give a presentation and one of them is getting pushback on a point they’re making.

When someone disagrees with what we say, especially when we’re giving a presentation, it’s very easy to succumb to that feeling of panic isn’t it? We may feel we’re being attacked so our body goes into fight or flight mode.

But stop right there!

Be intelligent with your emotions (one of the ways I define emotional intelligence) to get into a constructive place about pushback. If you don’t like the emotion that’s coming up when you get pushback, can you choose to experience a different, more constructive emotion? Yes, you can. It takes awareness and discipline but you can do it.

Instead of giving to feeling defensive, choose to feel curious. When you come from a place of curiosity to understand why someone has a different opinion to you, it keeps the dialogue open and makes you receptive to learning. That attitude will help you speak with calmness and composure. You will come across as being in control and very emotionally intelligent.

Adopting an attitude of curiosity demands that you become audience centric, rather than speaker centric – always a good stance for most presentations anyway as a presentation IS about the audience and being able to meet their needs. As I’ve said before, make sure you focus your attention and energy OUT towards the audience, rather than focusing it too much on yourself. This way, you become much less self-conscious and any feeling of being negatively judged are less likely to arise.

When you do get pushback, depending on the context, you can say something like “I’m curious to understand what makes you say that”. Or “It’s the first time I’ve come across that perspective, can you give us more details”.

In the case where you may have made a mistake with some data or information, combine curiosity with humility. You can say something like “Can I ask where you obtained that information, I obviously missed that”. Or for example, “Thanks for pointing that out, let’s make sure we make the necessary corrections”.

As with all challenging communication scenarios, HOW you deal with them, in addition to what you actually say, is extremely important.

Nobody likes to be criticised or proved wrong. But if you have the awareness to proactively deal with the arising negative emotion by turning it into an emotion of curiosity, you will be regarded as someone who is able to deal well with the ups and downs of human interaction – an excellent communicator.