When your Boss acts like a child…

... Treat them like a child.

Empathize, clarify, and collaborate. And just like a child who has been treated with such grace and compassion, your Boss too will feel grateful and supported – even if they aren’t aware of it in the moment. Moments like these, skillfully handled, will always pay off better for everybody in the long run.

 Back to your Boss...

 No scenario will reveal the true contour of your workplace’s culture more clearly than how things go when “The Boss” gets upset about something and storms into the room or a meeting airing a lot of frustration and/or grievances. Regardless of what’s written in Mission Statements, HR manuals, and hallway posters, the heat and pressure of an upset Boss will always surface the underlying structure and culture of “how things really work” for them, and perhaps your whole organization as well.

 Following our previous pieces of Leadership IN and 3 Keys to Conflict Resolution, we’ll illustrate here how intentional communication strategies can powerfully shift and improve toxic situations. Specifically, we’ll show you how treating your Boss “like a child” can transform the ugliness of “Boss tantrum” drama into calmness, clarity, and empowerment for everybody in the room.

 For reference, I have a very strong-willed and emotionally expressive 6-yo daughter. On her best days Dottie is polite, grounded, curious, and looking to contribute to the bigger picture. in her lesser moments she is impulsive, demanding, volatile, generally pissed off at everything and everybody, and expects to be coddled and attended to while simultaneously taking zero accountability for her energy, words, and actions.

 In other words, pretty similar to a lot of people out there in positions of power and authority.

 My strategy for connecting with and supporting her in those moments of “unskillful expression” boils down to a simple 3-step process. As I’ve gotten better at managing my side of things in these events, she too has evolved her side and now those difficult moments are fewer and farther apart. And perhaps more importantly, we’re better able to collaborate in them when they do occur and can work together to right the ship and get back on track quicker and easier each time.

 I’ll go through these 3-steps here below, with a real life example, to show how they can be deployed just as successfully in the workplace to help modify and transform your office’s culture for the better as well.

 Scenario – My daughter comes stomping upstairs yelling about how stupid her brother is, how annoying he’s being, how she wishes she didn’t have a brother, and how she wants to watch a TV show by herself instead of playing with him. She delivers all of this to me at a high volume, and with a bright red face. She’s clearly furious, on the verge of tears, and has a combination of adrenaline, cortisol, and defiance pulsing through her veins. As she finishes her rant, she firms up her stance, chin up and hands on hips, and glares at me with a “What are you gonna do about it?!?!?” look on her face.

 For context, she went downstairs on her own volition to see if he would want to play Uno with her, in spite of me reminding her that he didn’t really like playing Uno. Additionally, she also knows that they both only get TV time for 30 min a day before dinner on weekdays when they are taking turns working on their reading and writing with a local high-schooler who is tutoring them on the basics.

 Back to her fury, it’s a Saturday morning when all this is going on, so TV time is not on the menu. And I can hear some neighborhood kids on the playground out beyond our back fence, so I know there are at least a few other neighborhood kids around for her to play with.

 Yet, here she is, full of piss and vinegar, coming to me about problems that I haven’t caused and expecting me to solve them and/or be an outlet for further venting of her fury and frustration.

 Step 1 – Empathize & Encourage

With this first step I want to be sure to meet my daughter right where she is, emotionally speaking, and in such a way that she feels seen, validated, and encouraged to vent further as a way of softening her sharpness. Doing this well accomplishes several goals, including inviting connection, avoiding further entanglement and escalation, and perhaps most importantly, setting the stage for collaborative solution finding.

 I handled that here by going down on one knee to be at her level and saying, “Wow, I see you’re pretty upset, and by the sound of it, I’m guessing that you’re pretty frustrated with your brother right now too.”

 Hearing this acknowledgement of her state of being, and at least the surface reason for it, allowed her to see me as being on her side. Or at least not in opposition to her nor uninterested in her problems. As a result, she almost immediately softened both her tone and her glare.

 Step 2 – Seek clarification

With this 2nd step I start to shift the focus out of the boiling feeling state and up to include a more verbal and analytical thinking frame of mind. Doing this well helps take some of the energy out of her emotionally volatile limbic system and brings some of her higher cognitive powers back online and able to better orient to the root causes of her frustration. Additionally, this is the place to start to introduce the seeds for actionable empowerment in the following step by being intentional about how your frame your question.

 In this example scenario, after giving her some more space to tell me how mad she was, I asked for some clarification but framed my question to better orient her thinking to some clearer solution opportunities. “Hmmm, are you more frustrated by the fact that he doesn’t want to play Uno with you, or by the him not wanting to play with you in general?” She further relaxed her posture, tilted her head, and after a second or two offered, “I really wanted to play Uno, but then he didn’t even look at me when I asked and told me to go away! That’s mean!”

 Her answer highlighted her central concern of playing Uno. However, it also revealed to me that she was more deeply upset by his total rejection of her presence. This information helped me appreciate the value of staying in rapport with her for a bit longer before pivoting over to the third step of what I call collaborative empowerment.

 Step 3 – Collaborative Empowerment

Here is where the real pivot towards solution-finding takes place. Immediately starting with this approach with an angry child or Boss is rarely as effective as spending a few minutes working through steps 1 and 2 first, and often instead leads to increased frustration for everybody.

 Additionally, a well-framed clarification question in step 2 leads more naturally into a solution space due to the fact that you can now piggy back off of their answer and start to build forward from there. And again, this approach is much more effective than simply spit-balling random suggestions and hoping one sticks. However, it is important to keep in mind that the goal is not “solve” your Boss’ problem so much as it is to support their efforts to do so themselves.

 Back to Dottie, and after spending a few more moments building rapport with her to offset her prior feelings of being rejected, I circled back to her initial desire to play Uno with hopes of reorienting her to that idea as still a viable possibility. “You really like playing Uno, don’t you? What’s your favorite card to play?” To this her eyes lit up, and she replied “Well, I like the red cards best, but I really like to use the Skip and Reverse cards so I get more turns.” I nodded and then added “I really like the Blue ones myself, but I think I like using a Draw 4 card, especially when they are almost out!” She laughed out loud at that one, and exclaimed “Me too!” as she started wiggling with a bit of excitement. 

What I did here was to get her grounded back in the felt joy of playing Uno, the very joy she was in search of when she went to find her brother. In fact, at this point she had largely forgotten that she was even upset just a few moments ago. From here, the next steps flowed pretty easily.

“You know what?” I asked gently as I stood back up, “I hear some kids laughing right now out on the playground. Do you think that you might find one of your other friends out there who likes to play Uno too?”

She cocked her head, hearing the faint sounds of laughter and shrieking wafting through the trees from beyond the fence, and then affirmatively shrugged her shoulders and started out the door, cards clutched in hand. “Well, even if nobody wants to play Uno at least my stupid brother won’t be out there!” Salty to the end, that one is. But nonetheless, she was able to take action of her own accord and cast it in terms that validated her previous state of being yet freed her from it too. Win-win.

So, what’s this all got to do with an angry Boss? Does this apply to them, and even when I am the one with whom they’re angry?

Yes! Simply follow the same steps above, being mindful of doing so as slowly as needed to best facilitate the transition between them.

Step 1: Empathize and Encourage. Meet them where they are, emotionally speaking, and validate that you see them. Encourage some more venting if you think that might be helpful for them. Do not try to directly push for clarity or offer any advice or solutions yet. Some good questions that you can ask here might include “And then what happened?” or “And what else did they say?” The real goal here is to invite them to relax into some degree of acceptance, both to release some of their own inner tension and to also prevent them from seeing you as a proverbial dog to be kicked or otherwise part of their problem.

Step 2: Ask for clarification. Again, the goal here is two-fold. Number one, try figure out how much of their energy is anchored in their emotional state and how much is tied to specific actions or agendas that are part of the mix. And number two, seek to plant seeds for possible action choices that can be followed up on in Step 3. An important caveat here is to be mindful that any energy still tied up in wounded identity markers, like embarrassment, shame, or disappointment, indicates that it might not be the best time to move towards Step 3 and that more empathy and time for processing might be called for here.

(Side note, if case YOU are the reason for or subject of their fury: If you are indeed at fault or otherwise implicated in what they are so upset about, it may be helpful here to “encourage” them to see any error that occurred on your end as not personally about you and more about an objective other thing, like perhaps a misunderstanding, miscommunication, or “not you.” Obviously to whatever degree you are implicated it is important to own, acknowledge, and/or apologize for you part as well, but don’t stay there or dwell upon it. Blatant attempts to shift the blame or weasel out of it won’t go well. But, once you clearly and cleanly own your part, shift the focus back off of you over to the impersonal intermediary. Pro Tip: Shift your body so that it is at least aimed 45 degrees away from facing them directly, and use your hands and arms in a gesture next to you when discussing the misunderstanding, etc., to better frame it out as a 3rd thing, separate from you and your Boss.) 

Step 3: Collaborative Empowerment: This final step flows naturally as a result of the first two being done well. Your efforts to connect with empathy and be present through some processing have already done the bulk of the “collaborative” work, and your framing questions should have provided much of the structure to support your empowerment efforts. A key thing to keep in mind here is that your goal isn’t to make suggestions, but to instead invite them to consider what they think might be possible. Just like with my example of asking Dottie what might be possible on the playground, I suggest a similar tactic here where you strive to ask a question where you genuinely feel a combination of optimism and curiosity. These conversations go best when you bring the matches, so to speak, but they get to strike them.  

So the next time your Boss (or colleague, or partner, or yes, even your child) comes in angry and upset, try the three step process above and see if you can help them leave feeling better about the situation and on their way to constructively address. You’ll feel better too, as will those around you. A true win-win-win situation!