Overcoming Coming Brain Freeze: Comebacks at Work

Commentary: The work place has become a challenging place today. People are on edge, tempers flare, and in some cases the competitiveness has taken a hostile direction.  Simply good communication skills is not enough.  Professionals must become skilled at handling difficult people and in many cases corporate psychopaths.

This series of postings will discuss using communication methods to gain control of circumstances and reduce your chances of becoming a target. We will cover the chapters in the book "Comebacks at Work" over the next several weeks. I'll attempt to couple these when appropriate with other authors works such as Dale Carnegie.

Overcoming Coming Brain Freeze

One of the most common frustrations of many people is the inability to respond effectively on the spot. Dr Readon points out that this frustration is like a Unwanted Repetitive Episode or URP, a habit, that can be broken. The problem is at the root. Could the problem be a lack of comeback tools and training, a lack of confidence, or some other trauma from childhood or family environment. If we are 75% responsible for how people treat us, we can not be blaming our parents or families or others for our shortfalls. Once you have released blame to others and assume responsibility of freeing yourself of URPs, this will defrost part of our brain in order to become a much more skillful communicator at work.

A Mind in Shock

Humans are social creatures who enjoy being included. However, the workplace is a competitive place where people want your job, do not like you or your ideas, or actively seek to exclude you. So even on the best of days in the workplace, there are difficult times that impact your social nature.

Research at UCLA indicates that social exclusion can cause physical impacts. Researchers determined that a gene, OPRM1, associated with physical pain is linked to social pain of rejection. People with a rare form of this gene are more physically affected by rejection than people with the more common form of the gene. Some people can go into "shock" in the wake of social pain and essentially shut down. Dr. Reardon associates this with brain freeze, a form of numbness or brain lockup. This raises the question for each of us: how sensitive am I to insult and rejection and does it cause me physical or psychological pain?

If you are not good with socially challenging situations that fall under the umbrella of potential or real rejection, your ability to respond may be compromised by socially induced brain freeze. Thus it is necessary for you to assess your past social pain experiences. This is not getting therapy but instead reflecting on the event with the realization you can think on your feet. The earlier event may be holding you back.

Breaking the bad habits and developing comeback skills takes practice, practice, and more practice.

Commentary:  Social setting also affects ones ability to comeback. The stressors of a board meeting, being heckled at a speech, or some other like event can add additional stressors than sitting in your cubical, break room, or work table then have someone snap at you. The best approach is to train in these settings when possible. Dale Carnegie coursework has a lesson on speaking and being heckled. Their approach is to over speak the heckler in a boom voice. I suggest should you be in this class seek variation in which you may address the heckler in a Ron Reagan fashion using humor to quiet him. Or ask if the lesson can be adjusted for the work environment where you may receive a put down during a board room presentation from a seated member.

The Pondering Gene

The brain freeze can also arise from being too analytical. If you are too analytical, that is thinking and gathering information, you may be too slow to respond. Dr Reardon points out that effective comebacks do not require impulsiveness but instead instinctiveness. That is the ability to quickly assess the circumstances instead of reacting. One does have to ask the question are they are in the habit of reading a situation too long. If you think you are too analytical, ask these questions:

• Is my credibility with those looking on in jeopardy?
• If the response is not effective will the person fell free to do it again?
• Is there little if any doubt that she intended to insult me?
• Is this not The first time he's gone too far with me or others?
• Is what was said acceptable by any standard ?

If you answered yes to any of these, prioritize them, and develop then train on comebacks that correct at least the worst of these. Do not worry about mistakes. It is better to make the mistake than not to have tried at all.

Commentary:   Being analytical is only one way of thinking. Creative and Gut thinking are the other styles. I have worked to develop skills in all areas and tend to be centered on creative thinking with strong analytical abilities to see patterns and abstracts. Sometimes my creative modus operandi exceeds the gut thinkers surrounding me and they fail to see through the comebacks I make.  I have had to adjust my style. Gut thinkers are reactionary and can be stalled quite easily because they simply have limited set of tapes they run which can be quickly identified then managed.   I suggest that you look at all three major thinking realms and adjust accordingly.  

On another point about gut thinking, the Book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell makes a point the humans have an instinctive hunch based on years of experience. Gut thinking in the case "Blink" presents is the outcome of training. Thus, there is no way around training. One has to practice, practice, and practice in order to gain skills in each arena of thinking.

Bypassing Comeback Brain Freeze with Metaphors

Comebacks are not one-liners or zingers. Comebacks are a variety of responses to hostile remarks that tend to terminate the conduct and move activities in a productive direction. Therefore, some of the best comebacks can be metaphors. Metaphors tend to frame things making an impression on people often in a positive or graceful way. Likewise, for many years, it was difficult to get through a work day without someone throwing out the now cliche metaphor, 'thinking out of the box'. Other cliche metaphors include 'a mistake is a gift' and 'paradigm shift'.

Metaphors are memorable and often serve future comeback needs. They pop in to our minds under similar situations, guide behavior, and offer persuasive images. These qualities make them useful in comebacks. Many categories of metaphors tend to be used such as sports and childhood.

The use of metaphors can be designed as comebacks because they can group people. For example, sports metaphors use language common to sports and people who do not pursue sports may not understand the jargon. Therefore, dropping a sports related metaphor to someone in a non-sports group, could have the effect of terminating the conversation or at least giving you an advantage to control the conversation because the person would not know what to say next.

The most astute at comebacks are those who are capable of crafting or calling upon compelling metaphors. Effective metaphors grab our attention and seem to make things suddenly appear clear.

Bypassing Comeback Brain Freeze with a Repertoire and Practice

Bypassing brain freeze that results from fear or habit is a matter of training the brain to view such events as opportunities or challenges. Training the brain to see workplace disasters coming your way as opportunities to prevent and redirect outcomes is no different than meditation or other training. Dr Reardon offers comebacks scenarios in her book to train on. She asks that people memorize them to help them through rough spots.

She also encourages people to add their own. Unless comebacks are put to work we will fail to remember them. With routine study and practice, you'll develop a repertoire of comebacks and rarely experience brain freeze. 


Commentary:  Project managers often find themselves having to manage personalities and have developed stakeholder analysis matrix for this end. This format is a good instrument for assessing individual risk and effective comeback responses. For many people this may be a good instrument for assessing your own circumstances in the workplace. However, if you do develop such a tool then I would keep it closely held as its release could cause you some political damage. 

Reference

Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink: the power of thinking without thinking. (1 ED). Little, Brown and Company. New York

Reardon, K.K., (2010). Comebacks at work: using conversation to master confrontation. (1 ED.). Harper Collins publishers, New York