Pursue only one goal. Your only goal in confronting verbal aggression is to ensure that it never happens again. Don’t allow tangents to divert focus away from the single behavior—verbal aggression—that you are trying to extinguish.BRING A STICK TO A KNIFE FIGHT
My first course on my first day of college was boxing—a mandatory class at West Point. I vividly recall racing from that class to the showers and then to my chemistry class, my hair sometimes frozen in the cold New York air as winter set in.
I also remember that none of us really wanted to get hurt, so we pulled (faked) far more punches than we actually threw in that class. Most of us did, that is, but not Harry Haymaker, a mild-mannered classmate outside the ring and a terror inside it.1
We were all friends with Harry. But once the bell sounded, to the delight of our muscle-bound instructors, Harry would charge forward with both arms swinging. He had neither superior skill (it would be hard to call what he did “boxing”) nor overwhelming strength. But he did have wild-eyed zeal. His advantage was that if he ever landed a lucky punch, you were going down.
Our faux fighting didn’t entertain our instructors, who yelled at us to hit harder and knock somebody out.2 They used Harry as punishment, making threats like “If you two don’t quit dancing around like best friends, I’ll make you box Harry.”
It wasn’t until our final boxing exams of four 3-minute rounds—a marathon compared with our previous sparring—that the limits of Harry’s technique became painfully clear. He couldn’t sustain his ferocious routine, and when he ran out of gas he got pummeled. No one pulled punches with Harry because he had hit us unnecessarily—and repeatedly—before.
Like Harry, we all too often use more interpersonal force than we need to accomplish our objectives. We yell when a measured response would work better, send a blistering e-mail when a more restrained reply would suffice, or issue an ultimatum when a firm but gentle statement of convictions would do. Excessive force is a club-first, think-later Neanderthal response, and it often boomerangs painfully back at us.
Conflicts that start or escalate with excessive force and intensity frequently cause a destructive cycle—attack, retaliation, escalated attack, and escalated retaliation—as each conversational turn adds new relational harm. According to researchers, verbal attacks and sharp criticism can cause damaging stress.3 What started out as a conversation about how incoming mail should be processed, for example, may escalate into a series of demeaning comments about the value of one person’s job over another and end with someone in the bathroom in tears.
I have a friend, Jason, who is a tenured professor and a respected scholar. Jason had a bruising encounter with his department chair, Steve, a few years ago when he learned that a new hire received a higher starting salary than he had received when he joined the department. My friend admits that he started the conversation off poorly by insinuating that Steve was unintelligent—a big putdown in academia—for approving the hire. Steve retaliated by pointing out all the reasons why the new hire was a superior scholar to Jason, which was also a major jab. The conversation got worse from there.
Weeks later, Jason and Steve eventually apologized to each other, but the damage was done. Although other influential professors expressed their support, Jason moved to another university the following year. Now, when Jason and his former department chair meet at academic conferences, they don’t even speak. A multiyear relationship was dismantled in one encounter. Sadly, it happens all the time because of the asymmetry of communication.
John Gottman, a leading authority on relational conflict, has demonstrated that harsh, negative words can lead to permanent relational harm. Over a span of more than three decades, Gottman and his colleagues developed a method that can predict with over 90 percent accuracy whether a couple will eventually divorce. One of the indicators that Gottman and his colleagues observe is a few minutes of a videotaped argument.4
Gottman pays close attention when an argument escalates. Although virtually all couples—even happy ones—fight, Gottman’s research shows that excessively sharp and negative responses usually foreshadow trouble. Disproportionate and searing verbal attacks, he has concluded, bode poorly for long-term relational sustainability.
The Neanderthal instinct urges us to overrespond when something upsets us. In addition to the personal and relational stress associated with harsh responses, there are five other negative consequences to responding with excessive force:5
1. Excessive force alerts all Neanderthals in the vicinity. When you send an overly strong message that you intend to stand your ground or when you push back too hard against an issue, you goad a similarly excessive—and almost certainly damaging—response from your conversational partner.
2. Excessive force often produces the opposite of your goal. People fight hard to maintain their autonomy and freedom from imposition, which is why many vigorous demands—quit showing up late; stop yelling at me; don’t date him—often trigger the opposite reaction.
3. Excessive force quickly loses effectiveness. When you are identified as someone who overreacts, people will insulate themselves from the danger of your extreme reactions and will frequently isolate you.
4. Excessive force prevents self-correction. People will often self-correct when given the space to do so, but excessive force makes it harder for someone to walk back from or disclaim her words.
5. Excessive force wastes your interpersonal capital. Overreactions siphon away some of your goodwill account balance with others. As we’ve seen, you can’t afford to have insufficient funds when a big mistake, major problem, or other traumatic event comes along and demands a significant expenditure of your accumulated goodwill.
The consequences of overreacting funnel us toward a single communication principle: apply the least amount of interpersonal force and intensity necessary to accomplish your objectives.
How do you know when you are in danger of overreacting or using more interpersonal force than necessary? Three warning signs can alert you. First, if your Neanderthal instinct overwhelms your communication conscience, you’re more likely to overreact. Second, if you are talking so fast that your mind can’t keep up or you’re literally getting breathless, you are in a danger zone. And third, if you stop caring about what you are saying and start focusing only on proving your point or winning the argument, you are likely to apply too much interpersonal force.
Of course, you aren’t the only one who can sharply escalate a conversation. Hearing harsh and unexpected negative words is discombobulating and painful, but retaliation will only make the situation worse. The ability to neutralize verbal attacks is a challenging but essential tool for your communication toolkit. And the easiest way to neutralize someone else’s excessive response is with conversational matching.
In a conversation, there’s a natural momentum that moves people toward a similar tone, pace, and flow that broadly shapes overall communication.6 This conversational matching exerts pressure throughout an interaction, moving intensity levels up or down as a conversation progresses.
If someone interjects harsh, accusatory words, she exerts pressure on the other party to match the conversation’s elevated intensity level. Those retaliatory words further escalate the situation, and since the instigator was primed to fight in the first place, the interaction can quickly spiral out of control. This is how conversational matching usually works against us.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We could just as easily moderate our response when someone sharply escalates a situation, allowing the power of matching to exert downward pressure on the conversation’s intensity level. As we’ve discussed, people often correct errors when given the opportunity to do so, and a neutralizing response provides the space for self-correction and uses conversational matching to remove some intensity from the interaction.
Picture an intensity dial that goes from 1 to 10. On the dial, 1 is the lowest and 10 is the highest. If you’re in an interaction that’s reading at 8 or above, you’re in a relational danger zone; 3 and below are relatively safe. Resist your initial urge to respond to a level-8 verbal attack (“You blew the Gatorville contract! I can’t believe it!”) with retaliatory words that would match the danger zone intensity level. Instead, pull your punches by responding with something closer to a level-2 intensity (“I’m crushed that we lost Gatorville. I want to do whatever I can to make sure that something like this never happens again”). Often, your conversational partner will take your cue and respond with a lower-intensity response.
You shouldn’t passively accept a negative conversation that starts on or escalates to a high-intensity level, and, as we’ll discuss, you shouldn’t accept harsh conversations too frequently either. Use the force of conversational matching when appropriate to intentionally lower the intensity level instead.
Four actions can help you use conversational matching to stabilize a conversation:
1. Be serious. Match your conversational partner’s seriousness, but don’t match the intensity. Although verbal attacks may take you by surprise, don’t suggest that the attack was wrong, illogical, or stupid—no matter how strongly you may feel that way. Don’t be glib or sarcastic. And don’t laugh, no matter how ludicrous you think the accusation is, or raise your voice, no matter how upset you are. Show your conversational partner that you take her concerns seriously, even if you plan to reject the claims. Your first goal is to reduce the intensity level of the conversation. Demonstrate through your composure during your conversational turns that the root issue (if there is one) can be discussed at a lower, less divisive intensity level.
2. Be focused. Focus on what’s happening (a verbal attack that you need to neutralize), not on what’s being said. High-intensity attacks are usually inaccurate, emotional, and destructive. They may even be nonsensical. Instead of trying to refute or address anything specific at this level, focus on lowering the whole conversation’s intensity by using some of the neutralizing statements in the next section.
3. Be boring. Your words should be calm, controlled, and stabilizing. Don’t add any new emotional material. Every time you speak, lower your volume and moderate your tone to reduce the conversation’s intensity level. Refrain from any retaliatory responses, ignore the logic holes that you’re dying to point out, and disregard any hypocrisy or foolishness you hear. In other words, be boring, and then …
4. Be gone. Once you reduce a conversation’s intensity level, look for an exit. Safety is fleeting after a verbal attack—danger still lurks. So as soon as you realize that there’s no substantive issue requiring a solution, extract yourself from the conversation as quickly as possible, perhaps after an apology, but definitely before additional damage is done. Even in cases where you still need to discuss a root issue, take a break in the conversation to support your intensity-reduction efforts. When you return, keep the focus on the issue and, as always, remember to contain.
Another highly effective way to neutralize harsh words is to respond with two things: an immediate apology and a statement acknowledging the other person’s feelings.
“I’m sorry you’re upset” (apology). “I didn’t mean to make you feel that way” (acknowledgment of feelings).
Both parts are required. The immediate apology “gives” the other person something that isn’t escalatory—that is, you give him an apology instead of the fight that he was probably expecting. And the acknowledgment of his feelings signals that you have received his message and that you are taking his feelings seriously.
Here are some other examples of the apology-acknowledgment neutralization tactic:
Intense statement. “This is the worst report I’ve ever read!”
Neutralizing response. “I’m sorry you don’t like it. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Intense statement. “I can’t believe you did that! That’s stupid!”
Neutralizing response. “I’m sorry you’re upset. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.”
Intense statement. “You contradict everything I say! It’s driving me crazy!”
Neutralizing response. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.”
This neutralizing tactic works because it is the fastest way to take the Neanderthal out of the room. It takes two to tangle; there’s no escalated interaction without your participation. This approach forces a trade: your continued participation for a safer, more restrained interaction. If your conversational partner doesn’t agree, then you withhold your participation and there’s no interaction. All that’s left to the Neanderthal is a lecture, and that’s unappetizing to someone who came itching for a fight.
Besides, you won’t let anyone lecture you very often anyway. Use the neutralizing tactic whenever you need to return a caustic conversation to civility, but don’t accept repeated verbal attacks from anyone. If you find yourself neutralizing someone’s harsh words frequently, you’ve got a relationship problem to address. Here’s how.
Returning a conversation to civility by neutralizing provocative words is an important strategy to protect the underlying relationship when someone has a bad day and uncharacteristically lashes out at us. Sometimes a boss, under enormous pressure, snaps. Or a colleague misinterprets our words and reels off a zinger. Even the most disciplined among us has moments when the Neanderthal’s voice slips through and we say something harsh and aggressive (even though we usually regret it).7 But repeated incidences of harsh words directed at us are probable signs of a larger problem: someone who routinely uses words as weapons to exert relational control. The technical term for the behavior is verbal aggression; the common name is bullying.
There isn’t a bully behind all sharp and insensitive words. But when one person repeatedly uses harsh words against another person, it’s not the situation that’s the problem; it’s the verbally aggressive person. And it’s a problem you must address if you are on the receiving end.
How will you know when you should treat harsh words as a serious relationship problem or when you should neutralize harsh words and then let them go? Paulo Coelho provides the best advice: “Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”8 Don’t assume that you’re dealing with problematic verbal aggression until you see it twice, but at that point it’s safe to infer that you’ll see it again and again unless you address it.
When one person speaks negatively and without restraint, the other person will have a difficult time believing there’s safe ground for dialogue. This greatly reduces the opportunity for civilized communication and, if left unaddressed, will come to perpetuate a lopsided power-control dynamic in the relationship.
Verbal aggression will deteriorate your relationship if it gains a foothold. Relationships characterized by repeated verbal aggression are injured and may become impossible to repair. This is the first reason you need to do something if someone is consistently using harsh words against you.
The second reason to act on repeated verbal aggression is that bullying can sometimes be stopped with a single conversation. Treat this conversation like any other important one and develop a strategy using the preparation techniques outlined in Chapter 8 (the example there portrays an apartment manager who is confronting a verbally aggressive resident).
In addition, follow this advice when addressing repeated verbal aggression:
Pursue only one goal. Your only goal in confronting verbal aggression is to ensure that it never happens again. Don’t allow tangents to divert focus away from the single behavior—verbal aggression—that you are trying to extinguish.
Be timely. Have the conversation as soon as you can after the incident, and use the harsh words as your example of the behavior that needs to stop. Wait for a private moment (it’s best to have this conversation without an audience) and for your emotions to cool down a little bit, but try to have the conversation the same day as the incident. Waiting increases the likelihood that you might avoid the conversation indefinitely or that the other person will treat what you are saying as old news.
Be firm. Tell the other person that the harsh words upset you (repeat the offending words verbatim), and ask him not to do this in the future. “Jim, it upset me when you said that I was an idiot for losing the Gatorville contract. I feel terrible about what happened, but I’d appreciate it if you’d not call me names or raise your voice at me in the future.” Resist the urge to delve into the psychology of what happened. You want the behavior to stop, so stick to a simple restatement of the offending words and a request for the harsh comments to cease in the future. Give him an opportunity to reverse course, recant, or offer anything that resembles an apology. The conversation may be awkward, so don’t look for a smooth apology. Any hint of remorse will work—take it and exit.
Contain, but don’t exit early. If the other person doesn’t apologize and the conversation escalates, contain it, but don’t immediately look for an exit. You need to stick around in this conversation to demonstrate that the verbally aggressive behavior isn’t going to intimidate you. Besides, the reason we exit escalated conversations is to protect the underlying relationship, and here you are addressing a behavior that, if left unchecked, is likely to seriously injure or possibly dismantle the relationship. You need to stay in this conversation. Repeat the offending words again and ask the other person politely, but firmly, to communicate with you differently in the future. If you don’t get some kind of apology or feel a hint of remorse after two or three attempts, exit the interaction. It’s possible that you’ve made your point, but you aren’t going to see any contrition (which is okay, because your sole goal is to prevent harsh words in the future).
If multiple attempts to stop verbally aggressive behavior are ineffective, you are on the short end of a lopsided relationship. Depending on your circumstances, dramatically reducing, or even eliminating, your exposure to the other person might be appropriate.
If the verbal aggressor is your boss, you might choose to delay the conversation until you can line up other work options, but you should eventually do something to address the behavior. If you truly can’t talk to your boss about the behavior or if she blows you off when you raise the conversation, consider talking to your boss’s supervisor about the problem, requesting a transfer, or accelerating your search for another job.9
With the exception of repeated verbal aggression, respond gently to excessive interpersonal force. Your most important relationships deserve restraint to prevent a destructive cycle of retaliatory attacks from knocking them to the ground. Smart communicators exercise restraint by applying the least amount of force necessary to resolve interpersonal conflict.
In the next chapter, we’ll use our restraint skill again when we learn to change the way we think about change.