It happened again: You started a useful discussion with an employee, and before you knew what happened, your “talk” spiraled quickly into bona fide argument territory.
And you only asked one question!
So how did it get there? It might be because you didn’t put the brakes on once you felt the speed pick up.
Communicating what we really want to say is everything. The minute we start padding, ducking and buffering our way through a discussion, it’s easy to slide into argument quicksand.
Communications consultant Marlene Chism calls these arguments “verbal ping-pong,” and says that people often get trapped into playing unexpectedly.
Managers know it’s a huge time-waster to argue endlessly in a back-and-forth when two people want to win and keep coming back for a rematch.