Introducing the Coaching Real Leaders newsletter

As an executive coach, I’ve spent nearly 20 years working with highly successful leaders who’ve hit a bump in the road. My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little more ease. 

I work with some of these leaders on my Harvard Business Review Presents Coaching Real Leaders podcast, where I take you behind the closed doors of real coaching sessions. (ICYMI, Season 3 just started!) I also host the Coaching Real Leaders Community, where leaders and coaches come together to take a deeper dive into the career issues that leaders face.

Now, I’m thrilled to introduce you to the Coaching Real Leaders newsletter, where every two weeks I will share my thoughts and takeaways from the many coaching conversations I’ve had over the years. Whether you are a coach or a leader, my hope is that this will help you more easily navigate the challenges you and/or those you coach face. 

This week, I want to share a challenge that a leader recently asked me for some help on: how do I deal with confrontational people? 

We’ve all been there, right? There’s always that one person (or people!)—your colleague, peer, boss, family member, heck, your kids!—who can push your buttons like no other. And, at least intellectually, most of us know how we should deal with them when they are being abrasive and the tension is rising… especially after the fact. But the real challenge is: what do you do in the heat of the conflictual moment?

Andrew (not his real name) shared that he considers himself someone who is pretty adaptive and empathetic in dealing with different types of people. In fact, he’s done a lot of self work to grow in this area. But Andrew has this one peer that he struggles with because of how confrontational he is. Even though Andrew believes the best thing he can do when confronted by this peer is to remain calm, he acknowledges that instead he “loses his cool” with his co-worker, then beats himself up for having done so. 

It’s an age old question—if we know what’s best for us, why don’t we do that thing? 

I asked Andrew, “What happens to you when your peer confronts you?” bringing the focus back to what is in his control rather than his colleague’s behavior. He said he feels attacked by this team member… and his reaction to being attacked is to attack back. Ah, so now we’re getting somewhere. Andrew is reacting to the situation rather than responding to it.

Andrew’s “attacking back” is a reaction—it’s how he’s learned to deal with situations where he feels attacked. And his approach probably worked at some point to get someone to back off. It worked so well that it’s become his automatic go to, his default, his habitual way of coping with situations where he feels attacked. So what to do? 

The first step is for Andrew to deconstruct the situation so he can clearly see what he’s dealing with. We do this by decoupling what is actually happening versus his feeling about what is happening. I sometimes like to play a game called fact or fiction with my coaching clients to help differentiate between what’s happening in front of us (the undeniable fact) and the narrative we tell ourselves about what’s happening (the subjective feeling experienced). The fact is Andrew’s peer is questioning his decisions and doing so with an abrasive tone (which Andrew acknowledges is a tone that this peer uses with everyone). The fiction is Andrew experiences the questioning and tone as a feeling of being attacked, which is subjective because someone else could experience the very same situation as a feeling of being challenged, for example. As a result of how Andrew feels in the face of confrontation, he goes into fight mode. And that, my friends, is what we call being “emotionally hijacked,” a term coined by Daniel Goleman to describe situations in which the amygdala, the brain's emotional processing center, takes over the normal reasoning process. This is not to dismiss how Andrew feels at all—rather it’s about acknowledging his emotions AND not allowing them to control his actions.

So now that Andrew can clearly see what’s at play vs. how he feels about it, what’s next? Step two is to respond (rather than react). Wait. What? What’s the difference between reacting and responding? Reacting is a default autopilot one-note way of dealing with the situation. Responding is seeing what options we have in how to deal with the situation and deciding which is going to be most helpful and aligned with our goals. Responding starts with Andrew’s ability to ask himself, “What choices do I have in front of me in order to respond to this situation AND stay aligned with my goal of staying calm?” He can push back without yelling, talk to his peer offline, wait until the peer has calmed down, not engage until his own emotions have subsided, or many more strategies that we can probably come up with.

The point is: you need to see the situation clearly to be able to access the options in front of you for dealing with that confrontational person. You just need a few options at your disposal beyond your habitual reaction that can help you deal with confrontations a little bit better in the moment. 

If you’ve had moments like this, how have you dealt with them? Or how have you coached others through it? I’d love to learn from you. 

One of my favorite books on dealing with confrontation is Amy Gallo’s HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict—definitely check it out if you want to go deeper on the topic.

Amy Jen Su shares some of her insights on leadership on the Greatness Podcast, discussing the good and bad days we all have as leaders. Amy brings up an important point: we’ve all been under a lot of sustained stress for a long time. Blocking time for reflection and making sure we respond rather than react is a necessary part of our leadership and coaching practices.

Deep bow of gratitude to you for reading my first LinkedIn newsletter! Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next one. 

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If you haven’t heard my latest podcast episode where I coach a rising leader on how to become more intrapreneurial, no worries! You can catch up on this and all Coaching Real Leaders episodes on Harvard Business Review, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.