The vast majority of workplace disagreements stay fairly civilized. But every so often, someone's filter disappears and a harsh, personal comment comes flying across the table. What you do in the next five seconds can either escalate the fight — or completely change its direction.
In my coaching work, in corporate and non-profit settings alike, leaders and team members usually keep their voices and word choices measured, especially when talking with a boss, a direct report, or a client. But cross-functional or peer-to-peer frustration can occasionally break through the filters.
At which point you need a communication magic trick.
The recipe
This one comes from Jefferson Fisher, author of The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Say More — a simple response worth keeping in your back pocket for the hopefully rare occasions when angry or insulting words land on you during your workday.
Pause. Take a breath. Resist your strong inclination to meet fire with fire, which will only escalate the situation. Instead, lower your energy rather than matching theirs. Then ask, very slowly and very calmly and as earnestly as you can — please, no snide or sarcastic delivery — "Could you please repeat that? I'm not sure I heard you correctly."
That question creates a moment of reckoning. The other person now has to decide whether to repeat the insult deliberately. And because your calm response has taken the heat out of the moment, their rational brain often takes over again, realizing they just said something that did not help.
So often, they will not repeat it. Instead they soften, clarify, or say, "What I really meant was…" — and the conversation backs off the ledge of emotional reactivity, toward thought and problem-solving.
Why it works
Strong words usually come from a threat response — the fight-or-flight machinery we all carry — rather than from someone's best reasoning. When people feel criticized, embarrassed, dismissed, or cornered, they may fight back before they have fully processed what is coming out of their mouths. Fisher developed this tactic in contentious legal situations, but the mechanism is the same anywhere.
The preventative version
The better strategy, of course, is not only knowing how to respond after your conversation partner explodes. It is learning to reduce the unnecessary conversational threats that trigger the explosion in the first place.
Compare these two openings with a co-worker:
"Your email to the client last night was incredibly sloppy and makes us look bad."
"I noticed six typos in the email you sent Mary last night, which is so unusual for you. What was going on for you last night?"
Both address the problem. Only one attacks the person.
I will confess that when I first read Fisher's book, the heated exchanges he described felt far more common in legal settings, or at home with friends and family, than in corporate environments. But insults and high heat do materialize at work — especially when the stakes are high and teamwork is under duress.
Difficult conversations do not require soft-pedaling the truth. But they do require delivering the truth in a way the other person can actually hear it.
