Coping with an Aggressive Employee |Dodging Landmines

Music

>> There is so much uncertainty in the air these days and everyone seems to be on edge. I recently had an employee who was in my office and they looked at me and said, you better treat me right or else. What do I do?

>> Or else! That's a little bit scary.

>> It is.

>> It was I think and the first thing you need to assess is are you really safe or not? And if you're not safe if you think you're in an unsafe situation you have to exit the situation. What I'm guessing if this an employee you've had for awhile is that you feel like you want to help the person and you know the person somewhat and so you'd like to move to a more productive conversation. If that's the case then what you want to do first is you want to ask them for their help. You want to say to them I need you to do me a favor. I can tell you're upset. Could we please sit down and talk about this and begin to somewhat diffuse them that way.

>> Ok so they sit down, you have them take a deep breath, maybe start talking about things but you can still see that they are visibly upset. What more can I do?

>> Well you've done the first thing now you've diffused it a little bit but they're still agitated about what they're agitated about and so now you want to move into understanding what are the issues that are driving that distress. Tell me what you're most concerned about. Let me hear the things that keep you up at night and start to move the conversation into some issues so that you can offer maybe some information, maybe some help.

>> What are the things that I should avoid in a conversation like this? Stay away from.

>> Well 2 things in particular you want to avoid. The first you don't want to make unreasonable concessions just to stop the conflict.

>> Give me an example.

>> Like you lean across the desk and say, Ed you better protect my job and I say ok Sydney I will no matter what. I can't legally promise that probably. I shouldn't appropriately promise that anyway. Don't do that. Stay within the bounds of what you can do. The second thing is don't escalate. You know you lean across the desk and say to me you better help me so I point back at you and say you better calm down. Now I'm creating an escalation and we're going into a conflict that has nothing to do with what's really going on. So I need to step back and and diffuse, not escalate.

>> Ok stay unemotional in all of this.

>> In summary.

>> In summary, first, assess whether you are safe. If you decide that you're safe then you move to diffusing the situation. Start out by asking for their help in calming down and then go into a conversation about the real issues behind their distress and offer information and help if you can. Don't offer promises you can't keep and don't escalate the situation. Keep it issue focused and help where you can.

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====