Preventing a Heated Exchange When We Feel Ashamed at Work

Organizational environments are rife with opportunities to experience shame. The experience of organizational shame can be painful. It can bring about a strong concern that there exists a threat to one's important, work-related identity.¹

It is this connection to the self—the identity—that can make the reaction problematic. It makes it very hard to really see ourselves, especially when the shame is the result of one’s own shortcomings and is visible to others. This is because shame and embarrassment result from a perception that one has failed to live up to a social standard.²

An ability to see ourselves would be handy when organizational shame becomes a trigger for defensive,³ and even aggressive,⁴ reactions. In the context of organizations, shame rage⁵ could be used to describe a hot-headed, undying urge to confront a peer.

Shame like this sometimes results in genuinely feeling that we have been wronged by our ostensively "shaming" coworker. But this could be a warning sign. What may seem like an opportunity to advocate for our cherished values or identity could be teaching us to check our egos.

Calling people out might feel warranted in the moment. However, it is often impetuous, and we can’t see it.

Confronting The Ego

Source: DALL-E/OpenAI

The ego blinds us.

Even behaviours that at the time seem to be clearly nefarious or mean-spirited from our vantage point can end up pushing us into incorrect assumptions and ineffective reactions. When the ego spirals to having a life of its own, it could instead point to a few learning and growth needs:

1. Looking more carefully at others’ intent
2. Revisiting our listening and empathy skills

There is a need to shift to discovering what approach will help us fix the problem.

One way is to develop an ongoing, concerted effort to restrain the ego.

Coming across as adversarial in the workplace, especially when we espouse teamwork, integrity, and leadership, is a big problem. It can crush relationships and derail careers.

It’s not always about deciding if the offender is purposeful, inherently "bad," or objectively "wrong." In a team that we are choosing to be a part of, it must be about finding a way forward.

Doubling down on calling others out, making accusations, threats, attempts to counter-embarrass, and negative characterization will never, ever "work." Never.

It will instead deepen the problem by creating a "shame-rage spiral"⁶ of shame and aggression. Unfortunately, in the worst moments of emotionality, this can shine a bright light on one’s lack of self-control.

Call-in vs. call-out

Instead of calling out, perhaps we might try pulling in. Or, as Todd Kashdan, the author of The Art of Insubordination, calls it, “calling in.”

This approach allows us to acknowledge our humanness and to break down our reactions by making it easier for others to manage theirs.

Calling in can serve as a tool for moving from fear, accusation, and even passive aggression to curiosity. A focus on curiosity can help us understand another’s intent as opposed to giving in to the ego’s preference to shame them.

Serious and sophisticated attention to potential conflict in teamwork ultimately requires controlled partnerships in managing heated exchanges.

Fight

That impulsive, sanctimonious reaction—even in the face of what might seem abhorrent to us—can often be a perfectly normal experience of “fight” (from the fight, flight, or freeze thing).

The ability to keep it to our “inside voice” can save us from ourselves. It can save us from our ego. Honest reflection can reveal that what seems like a case for the “fight” response could be about nothing more fearful than “Oh no! They might disagree with me!” Or “Oh my! They have revealed something I was wrong about or did not know!”

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If our retrospective does highlight this kind of exaggerated “danger,” it is likely an invitation to spend time taming the ego.

Flight

Like “fight,” “flight” also has limitations. Avoiding conflict undermines shared leadership and social learning.⁷ Engaging (vs. avoiding) tough conversations, addressing challenging questions, and up-front, honest disagreements are essential for partnership in teams.⁸

Emotional reactions to confrontation in teams, like calling out, stonewalling, ignoring, and blaming, are simply destructive to teamwork.⁹ These kinds of reactions are the opposite of what is meant by calling in.

Is the self-control that is needed in heated exchanges difficult? Yes. But it’s pretty much the only time our self-control matters.

Listen

Emotional self-control, in the face of perceived embarrassment and other challenges to the (potentially destructive) ego, is enormously difficult for anyone.

The good news is that today, we know a lot about tools to address this difficulty. One of these is active listening.

There are two parts to active listening.

The active part consists of asking questions, but not just any questions. It requires questions that move us closer to understanding the other—not questions that demand proof from the other or that are intended to persuade.

The second part—the biggest part—is listening. Executive coach Marshal Goldsmith pointed out that exceptional listening has a simple rule: “Your only aim is to let the other person feel that he or she is important.”

Goldsmith also provides a solid set of tactics:

• Don’t interrupt.
• Don’t finish the other person’s sentences.
• Don’t say, “I knew that.”
• Don’t even agree with the other person. If they praise you, just say thank you.
• Don’t use the words “no,” “but,” and “however.”
• Don’t let your eyes wander elsewhere while the other person is talking.
• Maintain your end of the dialogue by asking intelligent questions that show you’re paying attention, move the conversation forward, and require the person to talk while you listen.⁴

Learn

An edifying design for listening like this one can open the door for learning. It’s learning that is more like discovering a different view than understanding or agreeing with one. It leans closer to epistemological than adversarial.

One does not have to be convinced of something to have learned it. In the case of a heated exchange, this distinction can afford one a breath.

And in that space, a paradox can reveal itself: If I give up winning and, in doing so, highlight the humanness of the other, we both win.

How can this be?

Because the more we abandon the ego’s desire to shine, the more empathetic we can be. The more this happens, the more we see cooler heads prevail.

The humanity of it all

Cool heads remind us that a person—even a person we are often way too quick to dehumanize with labels like toxic and narcissist—is still a person. One with the same legitimate human qualities and needs to be understood as us.

Humanity can provide an impetus for building transformative partnerships for managing a heated exchange. Specifically, we may see that the target of our disdain can provide help if we ask for it.

In a moment where we want to call out, we can call in. We can own our frustration and ask for support in mitigating it.

This is a way better approach than calling out, shaming, or silently avoiding a teammate or collaborator. And it starts with seeing ourselves and working to get a hold of that ego.