How to Handle Emotionally Charged Situations in the Workplace

Discover practical, proven methods for managing workplace conflict

Be honest. Has uncontrolled anger, excessive conflict or unchecked emotion cost you too much? Has the price been overwhelming anxiety and stress? Poor productivity? Lack of cooperation and teamwork in the workplace? Tension at home? A stalled career? Loss of self-respect? If you have the courage to admit the cost has been too high, we have the life-changing answers for you.

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Assess Your Attitude

• Is repressing your anger unhealthy? Not necessarily! And, we'll dispel three other common assumptions you may have about anger
• Self-destructive behaviors: Find out how you can be your own worst enemy.
• Stress and anger: Identify and eliminate your own deadly "triggers"
• How your individual personality drives your emotional responses.
• Over-competing: Is a too-competitive attitude leading you into conflict?
• Moralizing: Find out if this common pattern is preventing you from understanding other points of view.
• No one makes you feel … you choose how you feel. Step-by-step, how to choose the most positive, productive emotions

Manage Your Own Anger and Emotions

• Eighteen physical symptoms of anger: recognize them, and you’ll be able to warn yourself of an impending emotional surge.
• Environmental triggers: Learn how noise, crowds, heat, waiting and other external factors can generate an emotional outburst.
• Placing blame: how this common, destructive habit can lead you to disaster.
• How to admit your anger without losing your composure! The constructive, professional way to say, “I’m mad!”
• Are you chronically angry? A quick self-assessment to determine whether your anger has taken you “over the edge.”
• How to relax — quick! You need just five minutes to relieve the tension and anxiety of conflict.
• The “Diversion Perversion:” find out if you’re unloading your negative emotion on people who don’t deserve it, taking it home or letting it fester.
• “Channeling” the force: how to convert anger and negative emotion into motivation, direction and enlightenment.
• Three perceptions that precipitate anger and how you can actually control your anger by changing your perceptions of people and situations.
• Desensitization strategies: the key to controlling your emotions, instead of letting them control you!

Respond to Negativity in Others

• The very first thing you should do when someone blows up.
• How customer service pros handle anger — a 2-step process that has proven its effectiveness again and again!
• Managing the antagonist — how to keep others from picking fights with you.
• Sinister sarcasm: how to deal with someone who veils insults with flattery.
• How to respond to put-downs — you’ll keep your self-esteem intact without making the situation worse.
• Facing the out-of-control person: three immediate steps to help someone regain composure.

Learn Conflict-Management Skills

• Exposing the root of a conflict: five conflict categories to help you understand what's really bugging you or others
• A conflict framework to guide you, step-by-step, to a positive confrontational encounter.
• The “Escalation Scale:” how to prevent disagreements from developing into arguments.
• When a situation is too hot to handle: how to make a quick exit until you can get your emotions under control.
• Three situations in which you should avoid a confrontation at all costs
• Two techniques to help you turn off the tears (and what to do when you absolutely can't!)
• Two subtle signals that unspoken issues are the real cause of a conflict

Communicate Through Conflict

• Everybody wins! A proven strategy to resolve a conflict with no losers.
• Trust: how to establish it, even when everyone’s suspicious!
• Five easy tools to cut through anxiety and tension and get your point across calmly and rationally
• Stand your ground or walk away? How to see the right course of action through the cloud of emotion.
• How to follow up a confrontational situation (this effective strategy virtually guarantees no lingering resentments!)
• Politically smart moves: handling confrontations that involve your boss, higher-ups or important clients.
• How to tell the difference between a put-down and constructive criticism
• The single most important key to turn a competitive encounter into a cooperative one.
• Assertiveness: Learn when this approach will harm you more than help you.
• A course for compromise: how to know when you should "settle for less"

Build Positive Relationships

• Three vital ingredients for rewarding, successful relationships
• Anger and gender: Separate the myths from the facts on men, women and anger.
• Envy, resentment and backstabbing: how to get rid of these destructive emotions and enjoy honest, “aboveboard” relationships.
• Getting rid of “old hurts” — a logical process for starting fresh in a damaged relationship.
• Having fantasies of retaliation? Find out why this hurts you and how to clear yourself of resentment and buried anger
• Beyond the office: Learn how to prevent anger and confrontation from ruining relationships with your spouse, family and friends