Emotional Reactions During Performance Reviews
We follow The Rule of No Surprises to avoid unexpected emotional reactions during performance review conversations. Still, they can happen.
When they do, it's not your job to control or fix someone's emotions. It is your job to listen and reassure them that you hear them, even if you don't agree with their reaction.
An emotionally dysregulated person usually can't access the logical parts of their brain. Quite frankly, responding to an emotional reaction with a logical argument is likely to make them more aggravated.
Here's an easy way to remember this:
Respond to emotion with emotion
Respond to logic with logic
Mixing up logic and emotion will almost never get you the result you're looking for.
However, there are limits here. You don't have to tolerate harassment, verbal abuse, or other kinds of disrespect.
Respond to emotion with emotion
This doesn't mean that you should also get emotional. In fact, it's kind of the opposite. The best course of action is for you to keep your cool. What you do need to do is acknowledge their emotions. Otherwise, they leave the conversation not only feeling bad about the feedback, but also feeling like their manager doesn't listen to them. You don't need to agree with them.
"You really feel this is unfair feedback."
"I acknowledge that you're disappointed that you didn't get the promotion we had been talking about."
"I can see it's rough for you to hear this feedback."
These negative emotional reactions can have an impact on you, too. After all, you've just ruined someone's day, and it doesn't feel great. You need to take care of your own mental health and get in the right headspace for these conversations. Here's a bit of a silly visualisation that helps me: you are holding a box. I literally imagine that I'm carrying a box. The box is a safe place for someone to express their emotions. As soon as our conversation is over, I close the box. I leave it somewhere. I don't carry it with me. This both helps me keep a level head during the conversation (their feelings are just going into the box, after all) as well as reinforce that I'm not responsible for someone else's emotional response.
Get something to drink
In the heat of the moment, it might become obvious to you that the person needs some time to collect themselves. Chances are, they won't be able to realise this. After all, an emotionally dysregulated person will not be able to access their logical brain to recognise that they need a break.
I say something like "I'm going to grab something to drink. I'm going to turn my camera off and I'll be back in a couple minutes."
Hopefully, after a bit of a time out, both of you come back with a mindset more focused on productive conversation.
Ending a call
If that doesn't happen, it's okay to end the call. I have done this immediately in the cases of name calling, unfair accusations, other verbal abuse, or if it becomes abundantly clear that the conversation is not heading anywhere.
Ending a call doesn't mean that the conversation won't happen. It just means that it won't happen right now.
Here's my script:
"I think we've reached the end of productive conversation here. I'm going to end the call, and I'll get in touch with you later today (tomorrow/on Monday/etc) to schedule a time to finish this conversation."
