Your manager asks if you can “pop in for a chat” tomorrow, with absolutely no indication what the chat is about. Immediately, your mind gets to work. Have I done something wrong? Is somebody unhappy? Am I about to be criticised? You start going through recent emails and conversations looking for clues. By bedtime, you have mentally attended the meeting several times and, strangely enough, none of them has gone particularly well.
The same thing can happen when you are the one who needs to start the conversation. A client has let you down, a builder has left a job unfinished, you need to tell somebody at work that you are unhappy, or there is something going on with your partner or family that you know you need to address. You keep thinking, “I really should say something”, then imagine how awkward it might become and decide that perhaps tomorrow would be better.
This is your brain trying to help. It is attempting to predict what might happen so you can be ready for it. Unfortunately, anxious preparation has a habit of going round in circles. Instead of producing a plan, you replay the same uncomfortable scene over and over, and by the time the conversation happens you can feel as though you have already lived through it twenty times.
This kind of anxiety is very common. An Acas report published in May 2021 estimated that 9.7 million UK employees experienced conflict at work in 2018–2019, and 56% of them reported stress, anxiety or depression as a result. Sometimes you are worried you will be criticised, blamed or challenged. At other times, you know you need to raise something yourself, but you avoid conflict and worry about the reaction you might get.
Why do difficult conversations feel so stressful?
For some people, the pattern starts early. Perhaps speaking up when you were younger led to criticism, embarrassment or an argument. Maybe you learnt to judge the mood of an unpredictable parent and when it was safer to stay quiet, or you became the family peacemaker who smooths things over and keeps feelings to themselves. Those patterns can follow us into adult life. Telling a tradesperson you are unhappy with their work can feel horribly confrontational, saying no to a colleague can feel rude, and disagreeing with your manager can feel like a risk to the whole relationship.
The pattern can start later too. A bullying boss, an aggressive relationship, an angry client or one meeting where you felt publicly embarrassed can leave you wary of the next one. Fear of judgement adds to this, and with a touch of impostor syndrome a perfectly ordinary performance review can feel like the moment everyone discovers you have been winging it for ten years. Recognising where your reaction comes from gives you a little distance from it.
How do you stop mind reading before a meeting?
We also do something psychologists call mind reading, where we convince ourselves we know what somebody else is thinking. Your manager sends an unusually short email, so you decide they are angry. A client looks serious, so you assume the meeting is going badly. Someone takes a while to reply and your mind fills in the silence for them.
The trouble is that we become anxious about a story we have written ourselves. Ask yourself whether you are responding to something that has happened or something you are predicting. If an invitation is vague, you can simply ask, “Could you let me know what you would like to cover, so I can prepare?” A meeting may still be difficult, but you will go into it with a clearer idea of what is real.
What should you rehearse before a difficult conversation?
We are surprisingly good at mental rehearsal, but most of us rehearse the bit we do not want. We picture ourselves stumbling over our words, see the other person becoming angry and hear ourselves saying the wrong thing, which means we are effectively rehearsing failure.
So decide first what you would like to happen. What do you need to say? What would you like the other person to understand? What would be a fair outcome? Where are you happy to compromise, and where do you need to hold a boundary?
Then turn the conversation into a movie in your mind. Picture yourself walking into the room feeling steady, listening rather than jumping in to defend yourself, and pausing to think before answering a difficult question. Recall another time you felt confident and capable, even if the situation was quite different, remember how you stood and breathed, and imagine taking some of that feeling into the meeting.
If the unwanted movie keeps playing, start editing it. If the other person looks huge and you look tiny, shrink the image, push it further away or make it black and white. Listen to the dialogue too. If a voice in your head says, “You’re going to mess this up”, notice how it sounds and change it. Make it squeaky, ridiculously slow or give it a cartoon voice, and you may find it surprisingly difficult to feel intimidated. The images and sounds we create internally affect how we feel, so changing the movie can begin to change your response to it.
How can you stay calm during the conversation?
Anxiety speeds us up. We answer too quickly, overexplain and fill every silence because it feels uncomfortable, so slow it down. If something catches you off guard, take a breath, have a sip of water and give yourself a few seconds. You are allowed to say, “I need a moment to think about that.” If somebody gives vague criticism, ask them to be specific. It is hard to act on a comment that you need to be more professional, but a comment that the report was two days late and nobody updated the client gives you something to discuss.
The same applies when you are raising the issue. Rather than saying, “You’re completely unreliable”, explain what happened and what you would like done. “The work we agreed hasn’t been completed and I’d like the remaining work finished by Friday” gives the other person something concrete to respond to, so the conversation has a much better chance of going somewhere useful.
What should you do after a difficult meeting?
A difficult meeting can finish at three in the afternoon while you are still having it in your head at eleven that evening. Give yourself a few minutes to come back down. Walk around the block, shake some tension out of your shoulders and arms, take a few slower breaths or try a simple grounding exercise of noticing five things you can see, four you can feel and three you can hear.
Once you feel settled, work out what happens next. What was agreed? Is there anything to follow up? What did you handle well, and what would you do differently another time? At work, a short email summarising what was agreed gives you a written record.
Before your next difficult conversation, notice the movie you are playing in your mind and get clear on what you want to happen. Check your body by lifting your head and opening your posture, then broaden your awareness, breathe and take in what is actually happening around you.
