In the fast-paced world of negotiations and difficult conversations, it’s all too common to encounter rude, disrespectful, and aggressive behavior. Dealing with situations like this can be emotionally challenging, leaving us feeling hurt, defensive, and frustrated. However, there’s a powerful mindset that can help us navigate these encounters with grace and maintain our emotional stability. Angelique Hathaway, a negotiation expert and Founder of New Beginnings Consultation, has two valuable hypotheses to consider when facing difficult behavior.
Two Drivers of Bad Behavior in Negotiations
Human behavior is complicated. Rude and aggressive communication can be caused by a host of different factors, but Hathaway believes this information can be explained by one of two main reasons.
First, it’s possible that they were just having a bad day. External factors like an earlier argument with their partner or other personal challenges could be causing them to offload their emotions on you.
Alternatively, it’s essential to recognize that some individuals tend to be consistently aggressive, rude, or disrespectful in their interactions. This behavior may be a part of their personality and not necessarily a direct reflection of what’s happening in the conversation.
Regardless of the reason, one truth remains: neither of these causes have anything to do with you. By keeping these two hypotheses in mind, you create emotional distance from the situation. In the majority of cases, someone’s negative behavior during a negotiation is a result of their own issues and not a direct attack on you personally. This perspective allows you to approach the situation with a level head and maintain your composure, leading to more effective negotiation and conflict resolution.
Why It’s Harmful to Take Things Personally
To take something personally means to interpret a remark, action, or situation as an intentional attack on your character, abilities, or worth, even when the intention may not have been directed at you.
Internalizing negative behavior and interpreting it as a personal attack can lead to several detrimental effects on our emotional well-being and negotiation skills. The negative emotional impact of taking things personally can leave us feeling hurt, angry, or defensive. As a result, our emotional instability can hinder our ability to negotiate effectively and achieve our goals.
Factors That Intensify the Hurt
In order to improve our actions, we need to understand why the hurt feels so intense at times.
- Identification with Behavior: When you closely identify with negative behavior directed at you, it becomes deeply personal and intensifies the emotional impact.
- Emotional Investment: Strong emotional ties to a relationship or situation amplify the effects of mistreatment, making it more hurtful.
- Validation-Seeking: Seeking validation or approval from others can make negative behavior feel like a personal rejection.
- Confirmation Bias: Existing negative self-perceptions can lead to interpreting situations as personal attacks, reinforcing self-doubt and intensifying the hurt.
- Sensitivity and Vulnerability: Individuals who are more sensitive or vulnerable may be more prone to taking things personally and feeling deeply hurt.
Finding Balance
While it’s natural to take things personally, for a variety of reasons, it’s important that we learn how to manage those emotional triggers, as opposed to reacting to them in the moment.
First, it’s crucial to distinguish between not taking things personally and addressing mistreatment. Not internalizing everything as a personal attack doesn’t mean ignoring harmful behavior. Instead, it involves maintaining emotional resilience and recognizing that people’s behavior often reflects their own issues.
Next, reducing the tendency to take things personally requires developing self-awareness and practicing self-compassion. Building a strong sense of self and emotional resilience can help us navigate difficult conversations with a clearer perspective, leading to better negotiation outcomes and improved relationships.
More practically, as you prepare for your difficult conversations, create a plan for what you will do if your counterpart triggers hurtful emotions. Write that plan down and make sure you have fairly easy access to it. Ideally, this will help you ground and stay focused if that moment does occur.
The dangers of taking things personally in negotiations lie in the negative emotional impact it has on us and the subsequent decrease in negotiation and conflict resolution skills. By understanding that behavior often stems from external factors or personality traits, we can maintain emotional stability and approach difficult conversations more effectively. Practicing self-awareness, self-compassion, emotional distance, and strategic preparation empowers us to navigate challenging situations with grace and achieve successful negotiation outcomes.
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