Why You Should Ignore Your First Reaction at Work

We have all been there: You get an email from a co-worker, and just reading the first sentence gives you that ill feeling of dread. You read on to discover that you are more agitated with each passing word. You can feel your blood begin to boil. Your first reaction is to instantly get defensive. Or protective. Or just simply ticked off. You may be thinking, Why is this person sending me this email? What is wrong with them? Why does this always happen to me?

It turns out that our impulse reaction to things that happen at work may not be productive or helpful.¹ Things like getting an email we were not expecting or a text from a co-worker that may throw us off our game can be jarring. Conflict can then arise, leading to more difficulties. Moreover, a phone call or meeting or any other myriad interactions may be interpreted incorrectly by us impulsively, which leads to deceive us from the true intent of the communication.

Our knee-jerk reactions to things that happen at work are often misrepresented by us—so, to get better at reacting to situations and communications that arise at work from a creative perspective, here are three things that you can utilize. These three items will help us deal with that instant impulse reaction that may steer us in the wrong direction² and help us get on track with a reaction that is more appropriate for the situation.

1. Give the Benefit of the Doubt

There is simply not enough empathy being practiced in modern business.³ We are seldom able to put the shoe on the other foot and try to understand the other person’s perspective. That email that made your blood boil from earlier? Well, maybe the sender is having a really bad day—the kind of full meltdown day that happens to us all too often. Or their family pet has passed away or something else is going on.

Without approaching our impulse reaction with some sort of empathy, we are bound to escalate any issues without giving full recourse for why that issue is occurring in the first place. Any quick reaction that does not include empathy at work is usually inaccurate because it does not take into account extenuating circumstances.

Then there is lack of compassion at work. We need to begin to move toward compassion at work when we try to disarm situations that appear at first glance inflammatory. Everyone makes mistakes; everyone encounters things that are hard or complex or overwhelming. And each day we choose how we react to those things as they occur, and the choice of empathy and compassion is ours alone.

So, while your first reaction may be frustration or agitation to an email, text, or report that may be misinterpreted, the reality is that the misinterpretation is a great way to understand what in your message may have been misinterpreted in the first place. It also gives you the creative ability to edit that message in the future so that your communication may be understood in a better and smoother way. For instance, you may notice that your emails to the company project managers always get some kind of pushback. Your initial instinct is to blame them, the bunch of jerks! But once you get that impulse out of your system, you can use empathy to uncover that perhaps the project managers are super slammed and overwhelmed; then you can use compassion to help them deal with a communication that was misinterpreted.

Perhaps you can edit your future emails to just the most pertinent points. Perhaps you can tailor your emails to project managers on the team to just include bullet points instead of paragraphs to make them easier to read and understand. Each approach takes trial and error—and no approach will work every time—but by taking each communication on a case-by-case basis to customize for the intended audience, you may get better results. It just may diffuse a difficult interaction in the future and lead to a much more pleasant working environment.

2. Use the 10-Minute Rule

Ten minutes can feel like an eternity; we are so programmed to distraction⁴ that taking 10 minutes out for a pause can feel like an eternity. But we must pause. Pausing will help us control the impulse to get angry, agitated, or incensed when dealing with coworkers and interactions at work.

Workplace Dynamics Essential Reads

Beware of These 3 Harmful Games People Play at Work

Cultures of Disruption Are Destroying Modern Workplaces

Pause before you react. If possible, set a timer for 10 minutes to allow you to reach a calm state to avoid reacting impulsively. Research shows that delaying an initial reaction can have benefits not only to what you are reacting to but also to overall health and well-being.⁵ So take a moment before you react.

When you use the 10-minute rule, stop for 10 minutes before you hit send on that email or text, and see if the issue is still a bother for you. You just may find out that after 10 minutes the issue is no longer a bother. Or that after 10 minutes you can interpret the communication in a different light—one that allows you to see a different perspective. Or you just may realize after 10 minutes that perhaps you had communicated in a way that was not immediately understandable—and, therefore, you received pushback.

If we are able to implement a brief “cool down” period of just 10 minutes to allow ourselves to not fly off the handle and to calmly compose a reaction, we will most likely make better choices in our interactions at work. And these better choices just may make us easier to work with, avoiding future flare-ups.

3. Realize That Everyone Communicates Differently

Every single human being has a different way to communicate and learn.⁶ I figured this out the hard way when I was teaching both undergraduate and graduate school courses. I noticed that some of the students would instantly grasp concepts, but others would struggle. Which students would understand and which students would not was a complete mystery to me. Some people learn and communicate with pictures or are visual learners. Some people like to communicate and understand by rote repetition. No matter which way people like to communicate and therefore understand each other, it is up to you to figure out how to communicate with your coworkers.

Now I know what you must be thinking: Why do I have to put in all that work to figure out how others learn so that my communication to them is understood? That’s a lot of work. And, indeed, you would be right to think that. But I would argue that to not learn how to better communicate and accept that there are many different ways people need to hear the same message would be a disservice to your career.

So, how can we get started? The first thing to pursue is checking if what you are putting out there is getting taken the way you intend. So we can vary the approach of the communication to help hedge the bet that the communication is better understood. If emails are repeatedly being misunderstood, or communications in meetings are not really resonating with coworkers, change the method of delivery. It may be to show pictures instead of charts. It may be to explain how you arrive at a conclusion instead of assuming that it’s obvious. It’s about changing and tweaking ever so slightly our methods of communication so that we have the potential of them being understood by the widest possible audience.

I have been in meetings where afterward a debrief happens and two people have completely different interpretations of what happened. That is because everyone listens and consumes information in a different way—and understanding that this occurs can help you come up with a game plan for communicating more clearly in the future. So, instead of your first reaction to a meeting debrief where you are in utter disbelief at what someone may have understood from that same meeting driving you perhaps to fly off the handle and misinterpret the situation, understand that in every communication, there are multiple possible interpretations. Being prepared for that eventuality will help you come up with a consensus on how to eventually move forward and put in the work to understand how everyone communicates differently.

**********

Our first reaction to something that occurs at work may be misguided, and using the three tools above will help you plot a course of understanding, pausing, and realizing the diversity of thought that occurs daily at our office and in our lives. The three creative tools are not only useful at work, but they are also useful in our day-to-day lives where communication and understanding are critical parts of living a happier and more fulfilled life.