It usually catches you by surprise. At its worst, someone is in your face with raised voice and threatening body language while you are frantically trying to work out in your mind exactly what happened to get you in this embarrassing and offensive situation. Less of a spectacle, but often just as troubling, is the person who shuts down and walks out. Even if you are simply a witness to a tense exchange, that exchange affects everyone within hearing or eyesight negatively.

Once when I was turning around a failing software project for a client, I had to work with a hulk of a man who had a nasty temper. He was the Manager of one of three software departments I was working with. I was walking down the hallway one day and he stepped out of a room to block my path. At first, all I could process was his booming voice, red face, shaking body, and spit flying from his mouth. Then I slowly started hearing some of the words…”INCOMPETENT!….YOUR fault…300 CRITICAL bugs….you should be FIRED!….”

I thought, “Ok, he’s apparently blaming me for some disaster. Let’s see if I can find out what that is.” I said, “John, I can see you are upset, but I’m not clear on what happened. Can you slow down and walk me through it?” That seemed to take some of the edge off his anger, although he was still riled up. As he half-talked and half-yelled, I continued asking questions or making re-statements to clarify and thoroughly understand what happened from his perspective. By the time I had a clear picture (from his perspective — I can’t stress this enough), he had discontinued yelling and was speaking more clearly and at a more respectable level.

Here was the problem from his perspective: he was being bombarded with email reports generated from our software problem (bug) tracking system. His inbox showed 300+ email reports and many of them indicated critical problems in our product. The product was just fine before I showed up and now it is in the toilet.

Here is what was missing from his picture: we just added him to the distribution list, so this was the first time he had ever seen problem reports. In addition, each “bug” was transitioned through several stages in the system (i.e., initial report, assignment to an engineer for resolution, “in work” by an engineer, marked as fixed by engineer, in test, resolved). A new report was sent out with each transition, so one bug generated at least 6 email reports.

After I clearly understood what had happened, I was able to sympathize and sincerely apologize for his shock, because we did not adequately explain the output he would see as a result of being added to our distribution list. Then I was able to explain that the 300 reports really only described at most 50 bugs. Out of those 50 bugs, only 5 were critical and 2 of them were already resolved.

Now, imagine if I had taken offense at his initial (albeit unprofessional) behavior and started yelling back. We would have caused a huge scene, drawn everyone away from their work, and nothing would have been resolved. John may have even run off to fill the CEO’s ear with the tragedy he thought I caused and everyone would have been in an uproar unnecessarily. An uproar that could have taken days to straighten out.

Here are 5 simple rules to follow when you find yourself in a similar situation:

1. Do not react.

This is of utmost importance. When someone is being disrespectful or over-reacting to a situation, our immediate response is to be defensive. Refrain from succumbing to that emotion. It will pull you in and you will behave as unprofessionally as the person confronting you (or running away from you).

2. Acknowledge and re-focus the person.

This is the stage where you quickly acknowledge the person’s emotion or situation (without disdain) and then help them re-focus their energy on something productive to the conversation. In John’s case above, I acknowledged that he was upset, then immediately re-focused his energy on clearly explaining the situation to me (as opposed to just listening to him rant and rave). In another situation where John was pointing fingers and doing his best to place blame for a problem, I interrupted him and said, “John, I know you are frustrated. So am I. But we can’t do anything to change the past, so can we talk about how we are going to move forward and fix the problem? Do you have some good ideas?”

3. Listen, Question, Understand.

Let the other person talk first. Ask them questions to help them clarify their thoughts. This does not mean you have to agree with the person; it just means you are making an attempt to understand their perspective. Sometimes all a person needs is to be heard, even if the “problem” is not resolved to their satisfaction. In addition, if you can adequately understand the overall situation and their perspective regarding it, then it will make it easier for you to clear up misunderstandings or influence that person’s thinking.

4. Explain your perspective.

After the other person feels adequately heard, then he or she will be willing to listen to you. Refrain from being judgmental or accusatory. Use this as an opportunity to build rapport and clarity.

5. Ensure there is closure.

At this stage you need to determine how to move forward together. In John’s case, I offered to take him off the distribution list, but he preferred to stay on it. So we agreed that we would sit down together weekly to go over the bug reports just to make sure he understood the current status. Whether or not a compromise needs to be made or an action taken, confirm at this stage that both parties are satisfied and nothing is left unresolved.