Dear Crucial Skills,
How do you deal with sensitive employees who become overly emotional when held accountable?
Signed,
Tiptoeing
Dear Tiptoeing,
This is such a challenge! It’s the main reason people don’t hold others accountable—because they become emotional and defensive.
Two questions I want to address:
- Why do people get defensive?
- What can you do?
When I teach or coach leaders, I find that many of them believe that employees get defensive because they simply don’t want to hear “the truth.” As far as the manager is concerned, the employee got caught in their mistake and their guilt is driving them to emotion. So, their response sometimes is to get tough and say unhelpful things like, “Let’s not get emotional, let’s keep this professional” or, “No need to get defensive, let’s stay on topic.” While it may be true sometimes that people get emotional because they feel guilty, our experience suggests something else.
When people get defensive it’s because they don’t trust your intent. They’re leery that you either don’t respect them or don’t respect what they care about (shared goals). When one or both are lacking, or the other person perceives a lack of respect, you see a spike in emotional responses.
See, our brains are always scanning our external environment for threats. The moment we perceive a threat, our fight-or-flight response is triggered. We react. Defensiveness is the attempt to restore safety in response to a perceived threat. And some employees may have been shut down, mistreated, or disregarded by previous bosses, contributing to extra sensitivity that needs to be considered.
So, what do you do about it? You need to make it clear to the other person that you DO respect them and care about their goals. This can’t be accomplished with trite phrases when you’re in a bind. You’ve got to truly care. The way you treat them outside of crucial moments may do more for your Crucial Conversations than how you respond during them.
I love what the late Stephen Covey said. “You can’t talk your way out of something you’ve acted your way into.” If you don’t show respect for their time, their work, their unique personality, no amount of flowery language will ease their defensiveness.
I think you could have a conversation with this person to address this dynamic between the two of you. You might begin, “Hey Gabriel, I’ve noticed a pattern between us that I want to talk about. When I bring up a concern about a commitment you didn’t complete, you often raise your voice or start crying. I’d like us to be able to talk about things in a way that allows both of us to feel heard and find a solution. But I’m wondering if I’ve done something—or not done something—that’s provoking your response. How do you see it?”
That may not be a perfect opening statement, so adapt it to work for you. But please see the principle in the details. Be honest about the issue. Don’t let them off the hook because they get emotional. Show them you care AND address the issue. Ask how you can show you care. Keep talking.
Justin
Thank you so much for this! I know I need to make sure I don’t try to talk my way out of some bad behavior, but it so happens, I am attending a much dreaded meeting in a couple of hours. The leader is very condescending and difficult to listen to as she degrades everyone’s work. This reminded me about how I get defensive in a meeting with her and how I need to avoid that if at all possible.
Unfortunately, I am that emotional employee right now. I am in survival mode at work, dealing with health issues (which are improving), and family stress (one parent is in rehab from a stroke and the other thinks the family group chat is the best place for her to regurgitate extreme political monologues and share links of similar content.
I’m breaking down in tears when I come across yet another thing that causes friction or stress. I don’t believe I am trying to avoid accountability and generally am not especially emotional under normal circumstances.
When I was a supervisor what I wanted most was information about my team/crew. It’s a delicate tight-rope to cross to delve into their private lives, so asking “How are things at home?” is near impossible to do at the right time for your subordinate. Despite occasional reminders to everyone that “My door is always open” I found it was rarely taken advantage of.
I’d suggest requesting an opportunity to talk privately with your boss to explain your off duty stresses. For some supervisors it may be important to assure them that you don’t necessarily need them to fix those problems, and that you just wanted to give them some insights into the distractions that you’re experiencing at work.
A good supervisor can accommodate your needs without unduly shifting your duties onto others.
Good Luck, I hope Dad gets better soon.
I’m so sorry to hear this, we must be mindful that every nod of the head, or the person who shows up no matter what, or in a position of leadership, still has their own battles. Is there someone you can talk to such as EAP who can provide those emotional tools.
This is such a minefield to navigate. I want to hold this employee accountable, but the fallout will be widely felt. She doesn’t seem to have any idea about the volatile nature of her responses. I appreciate your article – it’s a great start for me! Thank you!
There are a lot of employees who are neurodivergent as well. Rejection sensitive dysphoria is common amongst folks who have ADHD/Autism/etc. Anxiety can also cause them to panic whenever the boss calls them into their office. Add to that many folks who have internal voices of perfectionism and they can be harder on themselves than you ever mean to be on them about discussing a mistake. Plus add the troubles of potential outside stress in their lives, anxiety over life in general, and they can be very prone to break downs right now.
So instead I would start with managing skills before I ever get to the “hey I notice you’re crying a lot” conversation. I’d do some work with the whole team, like doing “how do you best work with me” type exercises/worksheets so that they can understand how to work with me and how I can work with them. That can a) make sure I’m doing the best things for my team and b) make sure I’m not making it just about them so they don’t get defensive.
I also had a boss who told us to use a code phrase when we were dealing with a lot of “outside of work” stress so that we could tell her without having to disclose everything so that she knew when we needed a little extra sensitivity. I liked that a lot so that she knew to be gentle without having to disclose a ton of personal medical or family details to her. So we would say we had a “lot of apples in our cart” right now, and she would know to be gentler in her approaches when we made mistakes.
Those can add some positive points into the relationship with employees before you get to a sensitivity conversation like this and help you both have some tools of trust to work together.
Sometimes it‘s raealy difficult task. I‘m about to do some changes in responsibilities in my team. It means, one person must give up some of their own tasks so that another can take them over. One Person doasn‘t agree with that. Sie just doasn‘t see the need to hand over their task to colleague. Every time we bring this up, she starts arguing and feels attacked and not understood.
It has negative impact on others in the team, who start to doubt, if the change is worthy it.
“But I’m wondering if I’ve done something—or not done something—that’s provoking your response.”
I’m struggling with this sentence in your article – to me it infers to the person who is emotional that the person saying this did something wrong according to the way it was perceived by them. Being kind to them is one thing if they have a lot on their plate, but often it doesn’t occur to the emotional person that they are not the only one who has a lot of stress/pressure at work or at home.
I am honestly at my wits end with people who are super sensitive and emotional at my workplace. I’ve experienced that the persons who are sensitive and emotional tend to feed off each other and it becomes a group of people who are just doing their jobs and a group of people who are unfocused on their daily work by being sensitive and emotional – enough to make it feel ‘clicky’ as in ‘us vs them’.
An emotional and/or reactive response could result for many reasons.
From a manager/management perspective, I frame it the same as dealing with children – separate the behavior from the person. I really do not like the whole “Hey Gabriel….” example. Regurgitating things from the past will more than likely create an even more defensive response or possibly shut someone down together. It is important to start where people are – both the supervisor and the employee. When a crucial conversation occurs and/or a situation occurs that results in an “emotional/sensitive” response, stop it right there and do a quick pulse check. “I heard you respond with “”I didn’t do that””, could you please explain your perspective?” “I want to know more and provide my response.” If an employee is truly struggling or cannot cope, offer some breathing room and explain resources that are available (if you company has a quiet space). Then ask to have some time for a check-in later before the employee leaves. Schedule a time to talk and resolve the next day as a “planning and mind-meet” session. Let them lead as much as possible. As manager/leader, the important factor is employee understands the requirements and the need to outline issues and successes with manager. Having a comfort level with issues and successes – as well as the breathing time to get calm and collected – will build trust and allow the employee to build resilience. Having a flow of conversation of issues and successes with manager will demonstrate that both are equally important, and neither are a disaster.
Now if the employee has drama-filled responses and reactions to standard and regular job-related tasks and responsibilities, that is a different scenario. I was consulting at an organization that had a person who reacted with ultimate drama to everyday tasks and made every situation and task the biggest burden. She believed, and regularly moaned, that the stress and burden was due to someone else’s ineffectiveness. If that person was my direct report or directly on my team, I would have been having a crucial conversation with them!
This article doesn’t mention the fact that some people get emotional more easily than other, which is an important part of the situation!
My day start off, today is a new day, yesterday is dead stink and gone. My question is for me is what can I do today to make this day different. I know there is a purpose for this day for me. Each day can be good bad and ugly, or beautiful. We all have choice it’s what we do with it.