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I wonder if you have difficulty controlling your emotions when you’re in a crucial conversation. I can tell you that I do. Crucial conversations are almost always highly charged emotionally. They are about issues that are sensitive; they usually are bringing to light some wrong behavior or mistake that is not easy to talk about. And they can cause all kinds of emotional responses.

We’ve used a hypothetical situation this week of an employee who has proven to be dishonest in several areas and now a crucial conversation is necessary. It’s like catching your kid with his hand in the cookie jar—the proof is irrefutable but they still try to avoid the consequences. So, how can this crucial conversation move forward to an effective conclusion when you or the other person is angry, scared or hurt?

Someone has said, “When it comes to strong emotions, you either find a way to master them or fall hostage to them.” If both people in this crucial conversation fall hostage to their emotions, a good result can still be reached. If both respond from emotions at all. This is where we have a wonderful resource—prayer—to help us keep control of our emotions. If you know you’re going to have this conversation, be sure to pray in advance that God will give you emotional control. That doesn’t mean you won’t feel emotion, but rather that your words, your tone of voice, your body language, and your reaction will not come from a place of anger or frustration.

Slowing down and taking some deep breaths gives you time to settle your emotions a bit. Keep putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and trying to empathize with where they are coming from. Those simple techniques will help you not to let your emotions control you. This doesn’t mean that you back down from confronting the truth of the situation, but that you do so with the right motivation and appropriate words.

This verse from Psalm 37 is relevant to these crucial conversations: “The mouths of the righteous utter wisdom, and their tongues speak what is just.”  (Psalm 37:30)

That’s a very good prayer for us when we’re entering an emotional conversation—that God will enable us to utter wisdom and speak only what is just.