You're Doing It Wrong

I was on a tech support call not long ago... And let's just say the person on the other end had not attended a communication training with our team. 🙂  She was short. Abrupt. Clearly frustrated. And at one point, in a tone that left very little room for interpretation, she exclaimed, "Ma'am! You're doing it wrong!"

I'll be honest, I was caught off guard. There was a moment where I felt the pull to match her energy. To remind her how she was speaking to me. To be equally direct about the fact that I had called for help, not a scolding.

But I didn't.  Instead, I took a breath. And I softened.

I acknowledged that troubleshooting over the phone, trying to walk someone through a problem you can't see, is genuinely hard. I gave her a small moment of grace she had NOT offered me.

And something shifted.

She softened too. Almost immediately. The rest of the call was not only productive, it was warm. By the end, she offered me her personal phone number in case I had more trouble. I politely declined. But I didn't miss what had just happened.

It's Not What You Say. It's How You Say It

We've all heard that before. Most of us have said it to someone else. And yet, in the moments when someone is short with us, dismissive, or just plain rude, the temptation to match their tone is powerful. It feels justified. It feels fair. It might even feel necessary.

But matching negativity rarely gets us where we want to go. It escalates instead of resolves. It makes the interaction about the tension rather than the problem that needs solving. And it almost always leaves both people feeling worse.

What works, even when it's harder, is the opposite. Not because the other person has "earned" your grace in that moment. But because you choose to see the situation from the other person's perspective and you desires a resolution. And softening is often the fastest path to one.

The Power of Humanizing the Other Person

What I did on that call wasn't complicated. I simply acknowledged that her situation was difficult. I stepped out of my own frustration for a moment and considered hers.

That's it. That's the whole move.

It's called humanizing, and it's one of the most disarming tools available to leaders, communicators, and frankly anyone who has to interact with other people. Which is all of us.

When someone is short, there's usually something underneath it. Stress. Pressure. A hard day. A long queue of frustrated callers before you arrived. That context doesn't excuse poor behavior. But recognizing it, even silently, changes how we respond to it. And how we respond almost always determines where the conversation goes next.

What This Looks Like in Leadership

Leaders encounter dysregulated people regularly. A team member who snaps in a meeting. A colleague who sends a terse email. An employee who pushes back with more heat than the situation seems to warrant.

The instinct is often to address the tone immediately, or to match it. But self-aware leaders know that the first job in those moments isn't to correct. It's to stabilize.

A few ways to take the higher ground without losing the thread:

1. Don't mirror the energy, set it. You are not obligated to meet someone where their worst moment is. When you stay calm, you're not being passive. You're being the most powerful person in the room. Regulation is contagious, and it almost always travels from the calmer person to the more activated one.

2. Acknowledge before you address.  A simple acknowledgment, "I can see this is frustrating" or "I imagine this has been a difficult situation", costs nothing and changes everything. It signals that you see the person, not just the problem. And people who feel seen tend to become more reasonable, quickly.

3. Separate the behavior from your response to it.  You can dislike how someone is speaking to you and still choose how you respond. Those are two different decisions. The first is about them. The second is entirely yours.

4. Address the tone, after the moment passes.  Taking the higher ground in the moment doesn't mean ignoring the behavior forever. If a team member was disrespectful, that conversation still needs to happen, once the temperature in the room has dropped. Timing matters. Correction lands better when the person is no longer activated.

Reflection Questions

• When someone brings frustration or negativity into an interaction, what is my default response?

• Have I ever matched someone's poor tone, and made the situation worse as a result?

• How often do I pause to consider what might be driving someone's difficult behavior before I react to it?

• Am I modeling emotional regulation for my team, or am I modeling reactivity?

  
  

The tech support call could have gone very differently. It didn't, because one person in the conversation decided to take the higher ground. That person didn't have to be me. But I'm glad it was.

You get to decide what kind of energy you bring into hard moments. And that decision matters more than most people realize.

You matter. Especially when you choose grace over reaction, not because it's easy, but because it works.

If you want support around culture, communication, or trauma-responsive practices, whether through a keynote, a workshop, professional development, or coaching, we'd love to connect and explore what might be helpful for you and your team.