Tips on Making Good Decisions in the Presence of Strong Emotion

There are two parallel universes at play when human beings communicate. One is the universe of the "people and relationship issues" involved. The other is the universe of the "substantive issues" that are on the table. Sometimes group decision-making bogs down because the relationships, emotions, personalities, "bad blood", stereotypes, and psychological needs at the table distract decision makers from resolving the substantive issues that brought them together. Conflicts between individual people involved can blur the substantive issues needing attention.

When tough decisions have to be made, it is inevitable that some people will have strong feelings and reactions (that is what makes these decisions the tough ones). Like it or not, the way people respond to feelings has an enormous impact on the amount of substantive progress that can be made. Most commonly, people begin to not trust each other and then avoid and work around each other; or, if forced to work together, they work slowly and with little creativity. Consequently, feelings must be addressed. Regardless of whom you are dealing with, when the stakes are significant, everyone is likely to be better off if feelings and relationship issues are raised and dealt with early and well, rather than put off and allowed to fester.

Acknowledge your and your counterparts' feelings before problem solving.

• Acknowledge the reality of what the other person is feeling, but recognize that you don't have to agree with them. You can understand how someone might see a situation differently but still continue to hold your view.
• Describe your own feelings, rather than making attributions about the other person. Your emotions will come out in some way during the conversation and it is better to deal with them explicitly.

Separate intent from impact, but recognize that both are real and important.

• Recognize that the impact of your counterpart's behavior on you might be very different from his or her intent. Consider sharing the impact of the other person's actions on you, but recognize that the intent might have been quite different. Ask for clarification of what they intended.
• Acknowledge the impact your actions might have had on the other person. Explain your intentions, but recognize that doing so does not erase the impact.

Whenever feelings become so "loud" or strong that they get in the way of your ability to work effectively with someone, addressing those feelings explicitly can be the quickest way to achieve a good substantive outcome. Unfortunately, putting feelings on the table and dealing with them directly is difficult for many people. Handled badly, an effort to discuss feelings explicitly can exacerbate the situation, creating the very rift in the relationship that you hoped to avoid.

The key to dealing with feelings productively is to get prepared to do so, and then to follow two simple rules, one for responding to other people's feelings and one for expressing your own.

Prepare. To get ready for an effective conversation about feelings, it can help to jot down some notes in response to the following questions.

1. What is the impact of the other person's actions on me? I feel...
2. How might the other person feel?
3. What are each of our attributions about what happened and attributions about intent?
4. How might I express my feelings without blaming or making attributions?
5. How might I acknowledge the other person's feelings without accepting blame or necessarily agreeing with their point of view?

When you have prepared, it is time to have the conversation. Having an effective conversation about feelings involves both dealing with others' feelings and expressing your own.

1. Acknowledge others' feelings before problem solving. Acknowledging feelings can be difficult when you feel blamed for them. You might feel a tendency to fight back by telling the person who is raising his or her feelings that he or she is being too sensitive. This response is unhelpful and invites resentment and, over time, will almost certainly damage the relationship with that person. It sends an implicit (and infuriating) message: Be like me and there won't be a problem. This is unrealistic, because people cannot easily change such aspects of who they are. It is also one-sided. After all, the other person could just as well claim that you are not being sensitive enough. It is better to recognize that people are different and that people in relationships need to figure out how to accommodate their diversity fairly and productively.

The common error in dealing with other people's feelings is to try to skip over having to discuss them by trying to fix the underlying substantive problem. Unfortunately, after they are created, feelings often take on a life of their own, and trying to ignore them can make the problem worse. People need to feel heard. Not acknowledging another person's emotions is usually a strategy (and not a very good one) for making oneself feel more comfortable, rather than for saving time and effort. You need to deal with feelings by acknowledging them before you can move on to problem solving.

2. Share your feelings, not attributions about the other person. The common error in sharing your own feelings is not to share them, but rather to make attributions about the other person, such as, "You were unprofessional" (vs. "I felt hurt"). "Sure I told them how I felt–I told them that they were selfish and ungrateful," is a typical illustration of the way we commonly leave our own feelings out of difficult conversations. Rather than describing how you felt, this statement asserts something you could not possibly know or prove about what was going on inside of someone else's mind. Such statements are likely to invite a pointless argument.

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