How to handle a potentially dicey confrontation

Today, I had to handle a potentially dicey confrontation when one of my former team members queried why a certain task that I had promised to be done a year ago was still not completed and he was understandably edgy about it, even adopting an aggressive and confrontational posture towards me. The truth is that I have missed the urgency of the task and let the months pass by because I hadn't considered the task to be a priority.

Nonetheless, the way one handles such a situation will determine whether the problem escalates or not. Here are some tips to defuse the situation:

1. If you're in the wrong, admit your mistake. There's no point in defending yourself and you're only inviting the aggrieved party to step up the attack if you stonewall yourself.

2. Acknowledge his grievance. If he took the trouble to approach you and became emotional about it, surely you have to respect his grievance, regardless of whether it is justified or not. As a leader with responsibility, your members' views and grievances should matter as much to you as your own.

3. Thank the other party for sharing his grievance. This is a sure-way to defuse the tension because you're responding with grace and displaying humility. I find that most of time, it makes sense to thank the other party for bringing up an issue that you otherwise would have missed, because the consequences of ignoring the issue are huge. Think context - not just focus on your pride. And of course, thank sincerely from the bottem of your heart.

4. Promise to act on the grievance - and do it right. In this case, it's better to have a gameplan ready and a mental note of the timeline and course of action that needs to be taken. Everyone likes a solution to every sticky problem, and everyone certainly treasures those who act on their promises. The ball is now in your court to follow through on your promise and be a person of integrity. What you do here affects how people perceive you to be.

5. Update the other party on your course of action. By acknowledging the grievance and promising to act on it, you have now made yourself accountable to the other party on your progress. Take it one step further to assuage his fears and mistrust by updating him on the course of action. If you found that there's nothing you can do about the situation, be frank to the other party. There's no point covering up one lie with another excuse or lie.

Those of you who have read the Straits Times forum pages will shake your head at how some people respond aggressively to criticism, or how some companies go to amazing lengths to justify their actions, even when there is genuine room to examine the writers' grievances. The truth is that we cannot be right all the time, and how we respond to criticism (justified or not) tells more about us than how our reputation is affected if we are perceived to be wrong.

One can forgive another for making a mistake, but one can't forgive another for assuming that he's too right to make a mistake.