How to Navigate Difficult Situations at Work

Work is filled with difficult moments—a mean coworker, a boss who ignores your ideas, unrealistic demands from stakeholders and a problem that turns out harder than expected. 

Such moments often arouse strong feelings of anger, hurt, frustration, desperation, self-doubt, low self-worth and inadequacy. 

Instead of tackling the situation with a clear head, we let our emotions determine how we think and how we act. 

We either: 

1. Ignore the problem for too long, which messes with our head and interferes with our ability to focus and put in our best effort.  
2. React in ways that make the problem worse. 
3. Lash out our frustration on others who aren’t connected to our problem, but are easier to target. 

Such overreaction or lack of action breaks trust and damages relationships, which makes it harder to collaborate and get work done. Problems that could have been solved in one conversation linger on with endless debates. Deadlines extend, stakeholders turn anxious and business targets are missed. 

Learning to navigate difficult situations is a skill that can be mastered by developing the right mindset and practicing the right strategies. 

Your hardest times often lead to the greatest moments of your life. Keep going. Tough situations build strong people in the end.
— Roy Bennett

Whether it’s conflict of ideas, conflict of viewpoint or conflict of interest, addressing problems at the right time can save you and others from a lot of misery. Less distractions from unresolved conflicts will leave you with more time and energy to do work that matters. 

Get closer to reality  

Your mind is a drama seeking machine—it has the tendency to exaggerate and blow things out of proportion. 

It likes to cook up stories, give you a central act in each story and assume the worst possible outcomes. 

So, while your brain can alert you when encountered with a difficult situation, it can also make you act in counter productive ways by distorting reality and making you believe in things that don’t exist. 

You may assume that your coworker is out to get you when they disagree. 

When you’re not able to find a solution to a complex problem, it can fill you with self-doubt.

When you’re passed up for a promotion, you may assume that your manager is biased instead of focusing on the skills you lack and what you need to do to improve.

Viewing the situation based on your preconceived notions and beliefs makes you disregard alternative solutions and other possibilities. 

These biases, left unchecked, can interfere with your ability to think clearly and solve problems. 

We construct our beliefs, mostly unconsciously, and thereafter they hold us captive. They can help us focus and make us more effective, but sadly, they also can limit us: they blind us to possibility and subject us to fog, fear, and doubt.
— Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking

Finding a solution to a difficult problem requires getting close to reality and facing the facts of your situation instead of leading with your biased judgments and faulty beliefs. 

Some questions to help you get closer to reality:

• What about the situation makes it difficult for you?
• What emotions do you feel? How are these emotions interfering with your ability to think clearly?
• What biases might be preventing you from exploring alternative viewpoints? 
• What do others who aren’t in your position think about the challenges you’re facing?

Separate right from wrong in a difficult situation to focus on what matters. 

Give up victim mentality 

When faced with a difficult situation, adopting a victim mentality can prevent you from thinking clearly, finding solutions and moving forward. Assuming others are the source of your problem can prevent you from taking responsibility and feeling in control of your outcomes. 

Difficult situations come with many unknowns and challenges. Navigating them requires becoming a high agency person. 

High agency is about finding a way to get what you want, without waiting for the conditions to be perfect or otherwise blaming the circumstances. High agency people either push through in the face of adversity or they manage to reverse it to achieve their goals. They either find a way, or they make a way.

It is a sense of control over your own behaviors, decisions and actions in shaping up your life as opposed to relying on external circumstances, conditions and environment to decide what you can and cannot do. 

Instead of considering other people’s limits as their own limits and fitting inside a box based on what others deem possible, high agency people expand their boundaries of influence, push themselves to navigate the uncharted territory and do the work that’s necessary to succeed.

High agency isn’t about dismissing negative emotions by saying things like: “Be positive!”, “Get over it and move on!” or “Look on the bright side.” It isn’t about hiding uncomfortable feelings or providing false reassurances. High agency is the optimism needed to navigate difficult circumstances. It’s the courage to act despite feeling those feelings; staying optimistic while staying real. 

To become a high agency person, you don’t need special talents or knowledge. All you need is:

• Relentless drive to look for solutions instead of complaining about the problem. 
• When you fail or make mistakes while navigating a difficult situation, feel disappointed much like everyone else, but don’t let that disappointment get in the way of taking action or making progress.
• Put your network to good use. Brainstorm ideas, seek advice. Ask for help when you need it. 

Jim Dethmer calls this “taking radical responsibility.” 

When we place blame, we locate the cause and control of our lives outside ourselves. When we take responsibility, we locate the cause and control of our lives inside ourselves.
— Jim Dethmer, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

In a difficult situation, good solutions start to emerge when you take responsibility instead of blaming someone or something else for your situation. 

Strategize and plan 

Jumping into a difficult situation without strategizing is a foolish mistake. Acting hastily to fix the situation without planning can actually make it worse. 

Your default reaction to a difficult situation is often oriented towards the short-term—you think about what’s best in the moment to pacify the situation or make your pain go away. 

But instant gratification, however good it may feel, will most likely lead to an option with long-term negative consequences. 

You may refuse to speak up even when you disagree because keeping quiet feels safe. 

You may pass on a great opportunity because you worry about failing and looking incompetent.

You may shout back at an angry coworker instead of calmly handling the situation. 

You behave in a way that isn’t in your best interest because your brain on autopilot most of the time makes these decisions for you. 

When we chase the high of instant gratification, we make choices that for many reasons are irresponsible and based on poor reasoning . . . or no reasoning at all. It takes time and self-control to take in information, let people reveal their true character, be consistent and disciplined, and give conflicts time to work themselves out. Delaying gratification means working at becoming more self-aware and humble enough to admit that our first impulses aren’t always smart ones. 
— DeVon Franklin, The Wait

To handle difficult situations well, you need to consciously intervene and take control of your decisions instead of letting your brain take over. 

To do this, when facing a difficult situation: 

1. Think about the desired end state. What does success look like? What do you want to achieve? 
2. List down multiple options to achieve these outcomes with pros and cons.
3. Consider the impact of each option in the future. 
4. Pick the option which stands out with long-term positive outcomes even if the short-term appears scary or harder then the other choices. 
5. When there are multiple risks involved, devise a plan B. 

Even when you need to respond in the moment and don’t have time to go back and come up with a strategy, quickly following these steps in your mind can increase the likelihood of you selecting a better option. 

Strategizing about how best to deal with your situation can unlock creative options that are impossible without pausing and thinking.

Expect the unexpected 

Difficult situations don’t announce before showing up. They pop out right when you least expect it. 

When you aren’t mentally prepared to handle the unexpected, any deviation from the normal or even a slight change in your circumstance can make you highly anxious, distort your ability to think clearly and choose options that are bad for you or not in your favor.  

What if the company providing the third party software you are using for a product launch shuts down?

What if in the middle of your presentation, a technical glitch prevents you from displaying the content of your presentation? 

What if in a meeting, someone starts shouting or throwing accusatory remarks at you? 

What if you have a deadline tomorrow and your computer system conk’s off? 

What if the product you worked so hard to build isn’t received well by others?

All these situations, if not highly probable, are at least possible. They can throw you off course by taking away your sense of control over the situation thereby making you act in undesirable and ineffective ways. 

In life, there will be times when we do everything right, perhaps even perfectly. Yet the results will somehow be negative: failure, disrespect, jealousy, or even a resounding yawn from the world. Depending on what motivates us, this response can be crushing.
— Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy 

The best way to handle difficult situations at work is by being prepared to “expect the unexpected.” 

Think in advance about everything that can go wrong and create a mental solution in your mind using “what-if” scenarios to be less startled by the unexpected. 

You cannot predict the future, but you can plan for it. You cannot control the uncertain outcomes, but you can be better prepared to focus on the controllable results. 

When dealing with difficult situations, thinking about the worst that can happen can lift the pressure off by being less dependent on the outcomes and putting more focus on the effort. 

Summary

1. We have the tendency to distort reality to a version that matches our judgments and beliefs. When faced with a difficult situation, sticking with your biases can prevent you from facing facts and reality of your situation. To handle a difficult situation, separate fact from fiction. Differentiate between truth and your brain’s cooked up stories.
2. Your default reaction to a difficult situation may be to feel helpless, hopeless and powerless. Considering yourself as a victim of your circumstances can prevent you from finding solutions and moving forward. To deal with a difficult situation, shift from blaming and complaining to owning and taking radical responsibility.
3. Difficult situations often arouse strong negative emotions. When you respond to a difficult situation without pausing and thinking, your instant reaction is to choose options that make these negative feelings go away. This makes you lean towards short-term solutions that aren’t in your best interest when viewed from a long-term perspective. To navigate difficult situations, give up instant gratification in favor of long-term goals. 
4. Difficulties show up when you least expect them. Being unprepared to deal with them can heighten stress and anxiety thereby making you act in undesirable and ineffective ways. Being mentally prepared to accept that things can go wrong can keep you calm and help you find creative ways. 

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