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A colleague takes you off the project you love, and before they’ve finished the sentence you’re already writing your response.

Your reply is where the damage can start.

Difficult conversations come loaded with anger, embarrassment, fear or anxiety. Most of them go wrong in the first few seconds.

Three habits can change how they end.

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1. Drop the win-lose mentality

We tend to treat difficult conversations as battles, with a winner and a loser. The moment we hear something negative about ourselves, we brace our arms up. It feels like an attack, so we get ready to hit back.

For example, say your colleague moved you off a project you really wanted. And now, you’re in retaliation mode, ready for a counterattack. Which turns every conversation into a confrontation.

So the first step is to slow down and cool down. Then try to understand why it happened, before deciding what you think about it. It takes effort but this is the healthiest way to deal with anger and have a conversation that’s free from combat mentality.

Because even if you win, there’s a price you pay. When the other person feels you won at their expense, they’ll definitely find a way to pay you back, and that payback can last a long time.

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2. Lower the emotional load

Difficult conversations are emotionally charged, so they can’t be handled like ordinary ones.

And, only a very few of us actually know how to handle a conversation when our emotions are in the way.

And feelings spread. When the other person arrives angry or anxious, we usually pick it up. Now two people are carrying the weight, and neither is thinking clearly.

I know it’s exactly what’s hard in the heat of it, so here’s a practical trick.

A popular idea says the right side of the brain runs emotion and the left side runs logic. It’s simple neuroscience. So, when you’re emotionally charged, it’s best to activate your left brain, like you can give your mind a small logical task, such as count backwards in sevens or do a quick sum. This can take some heat out of a strong feeling and give you space to think logically.

After you take off some of the strong current of emotions, you can think clearly and express your emotions in a better way. This can help you have a difficult conversation that serves you rather than working against you.

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3. Stop asking whose fault it is

Difficult conversations are hard to read. It’s difficult to tell what the other person meant, and easy to assume the worst.

So we reach for a familiar question: whose fault is it? It feels like progress, and it’s a dead end. We land on “your fault” (or, less often, “my bad”) and the conversation is over.

Blame doesn’t help anyone handle the conversation better. It widens the gap between you, even when you’re sure you’re right, and pushes an already shaky conversation further off balance.

In these moments, fault lies in the eye of the beholder. You see their part clearly. They see yours.

A better starting point is what’s actually going on for each of you. Begin with the other person. Look for what they might be protecting and the pressure they might be under. Assume they have a reason that makes sense to them, even if it isn’t one you’d choose.

It’s rarely true that their only aim is to make your life miserable.

None of this makes a difficult conversation easy. It does give both of you a way back to the table, and that is worth more than winning.

Which conversation have you been putting off?

P.S. If this helped, send it to someone who has a hard conversation coming up this week.

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