The Person Who Stays Calm Leads the Conflict

There is a frequently-missed moment in every conflict that decides who is actually the leader and it has nothing to do with who's right or in charge.

I teach it as a leader skill, but it's just as important and relevant in peer conflict.  Once you know it, you'll always see it.

As a leader, suppose someone in your organization becomes angry.  It could be in your office, the monthly meeting, wherever, and you have to deal with it.

You have two options:  match that anger, or don't.  That decision is made in an instant.

Most leaders think staying calm is just self-control. It's not. It's the first core leadership move.

Here's the mechanism: emotional states are contagious. 

The person who elevates first (raises their voice, their urgency, shows anger) is making a subconscious bid to set the emotional tone for the room. 

If you match it then you've satisfied their expectations and allowed the altercation to progress. You're now negotiating on their emotional terms.  You've allowed them to dominate.

If you don't match it, if you stay steady, calm, friendly, empathetic... something different happens. 

The escalation/anger has nowhere to land.  This feels uncomfortable, awkward, and unnerving to the angry person.  

It shows that their bid for control is being denied.

Your counter-move is to try to force them to seek your calm.  If you refuse to escalate (realizing both calm and anger are contagious) your calm demeanor becomes dominant.

In a room with one calm person and one heated person, a leader who refuses to escalate will force the room back to calm.

And to the angry person who's abandoning an emotional bid, hitting that emotional wall and choosing to follow you back to calm makes them realize your authority in a way that no quantity of your anger every could.

That's the leadership move. Not "staying calm" as a virtue. Staying calm as the thing that determines whose emotional state the rest of the exchange runs on.

Realize that calm and empathetic are the states where communication happens best.  Those are the states you must bring, always.

Three things I'd tell any leader trying to use this:

1) It has to be real. People can tell the difference between regulated and suppressed.  The skill is actually managing your state, not performing stillness.

2) Calm without follow-through isn't authority, it's apathy. If someone's angry about something real and your response is just "I stayed calm" with no resolution, you have dodged the problem - not solved it.

3) It will not work as well on a stranger who has nothing to gain from your approval, but is absolutely powerful between people who have an existing relationship.

The leaders I've watched handle conflict best always force the conflict back to calm and then just listen. Then they help the person.

And that always reads as a good leader.