Communication under pressure

“What is the priority here? Meeting the deadline is crucial, but missing details could cause problems. Should I ask Manisha, though she’s already overburdened?” 

These thoughts trigger a surge of anxiety. In desperation, you ask Suresh to help with the deadlines. Suresh hesitates and says, “It’s my day off tomorrow. [Suresh shakes his head] I will see what I can do, but it’s a little frustrating when you take my time for granted.”

Your heart sinks a little, realizing you overlooked something critical. Guilt and frustration take over and you regret your inconsiderate mistake.

This scenario illustrates how high-pressure situations can hinder effective communication with team members. High-stakes situations include decisions about roles, organizational changes, conflict mediation, or addressing grievances. Missteps can harm employee morale, relationships, and productivity, leaving people feeling undervalued and confused.

While the circumstances might be beyond our control, how we operate isn’t. Regulating how you communicate under pressure could prevent similar scenarios. Healthy communication begins long before words are expressed, with emotional awareness, organized thoughts, empathy, and clear information.

Emotion at the core of communication

Jim Beggs once said, “What we say is important, for in most cases, the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” Beggs speaks about the influence of emotions on what we say and how we say it. Our emotional state—fear, frustration, appreciation, positivity, jealousy—is reflected through our words. Even when we suppress these emotional states, they seep into our tone of voice, selection of words, body language, and gestures. For instance, suppressed feelings of anger might manifest in the form of an overly direct order rather than a request. 

To avoid tension and misunderstandings, it’s important to regulate them before interactions. Taking a pause and reflecting on your emotions is a great way to ensure you have enough time for reflection. A common teaching in therapy and anger management is to change the emotion-inducing environment before resuming the conversation.

Practicing mindfulness with grounding and breathing techniques, gratitude journaling, and empathy helps cultivate positive emotions that reduce the impact of negative emotions, reduce stress, and improve creativity and decision-making. Active listening is an effective way to enhance empathy which is the second crucial component of healthy communication.

Active listening

Assumptions are ingredients that create misunderstandings. We, as human beings, rely on our assumptions to make sense of the world. The downside is that many believe assumptions are true. In reality, assumptions are wrong most of the time. A lack of understanding and information leads to assumptions. Unless a person listens actively, they might always be guided by it.

When we talk about active listening, we mean a genuine attempt to understand others with undivided attention. Active listening can look like asking questions to explore and understand the ideas shared by others. For instance, if your team member expresses their worry about the new leave policy, you might ask them “What specifically worries you about the leave?” rather than telling them to relax or not think too much. This makes the other person feel understood and acknowledged rather than dismissed. 

Active listening can also look like not being occupied in other activities (phone, videos, or other work) while listening. A better alternative is to inform them about your other priorities beforehand and tell them when you are available. It can also look like acknowledging their feelings rather than dismissing them. Remember that it’s  good to say less than to say something wrong. 

Organizing our thoughts

A better understanding results in a better response. But, remember, you don’t have to respond right away. Recall the part about pausing and, if needed, getting out of the environment for space to reflect. It’s an effective strategy for all sorts of emotions. Whether it be excitement, anticipation, curiosity, anger, guilt, anxiety, disappointment, hurt, or worry, taking time to reflect is highly suggested. In this time and space, we apply our third component which is organizing our thoughts.

There are two effective ways widely suggested for organizing our thoughts. One of them is writing or journaling—listing it down as it pops up, or creating a hierarchy of these thoughts. For instance, organizing task-related thoughts in a hierarchy reduces interference. Journaling helps you consciously grasp and explore troubling thoughts that cause emotional distress. For example, when you are randomly worried about the day going bad, you can journal to find out why you think or feel that way. Another way to help organize these thoughts and provide you with a new perspective is to discuss them with someone. Discussing your feelings and thoughts about an event, idea, or an individual can help organize your thoughts and give you a neutral perspective. You might find it helpful to ask for perspectives from trusted colleagues as well.

Finally, after regulating our emotions, actively listening to understand, organizing our thoughts, and gathering perspectives, we might be ready to communicate our ideas. 

Effective communication

Realize that listeners aren’t mind readers and won’t know what we want or feel. Defining the problem, stating factual information, or naming the feeling would be a good start. The use of ‘I’ statements is encouraged to avoid your statements coming across as blame, criticism, or sarcasm. “You” statements could cause tension and can be taken as finger-pointing. It’s suggested to be descriptive rather than critical and to refrain from bringing in older issues which diverts the conversation from professional to personal. 

Your body language and tone are key to getting your point across. While communicating concerns about behaviors, trainers suggest a neutral tone without a laugh or smile to cushion the blow (many people tend to do this). While receiving criticism or grievances, staying silent and attentively listening are suggested. 

Additionally, healthy communication for managers requires them to formally address issues, reports, updates, and grievances in formal languages and precise manner to higher-ups while maintaining semi-formal conversations and empathic relations with their teams.

People often get overwhelmed while applying these skills. However, once learned people tend to build it into their intuition. Participating in training and skill development programs can help you learn and practice in a simulated environment. 

The author is a psychosocial counsellor at Happy Minds