No matter how much you may try to keep to yourself while at work, you are bound to find yourself smack in the middle of an office confrontation at some point or another. An office confrontation can lead to a lot of undue stress and anxiety and, in the end, result in your work performance dropping off. Additionally, you may find that you go home and are still affected by the confrontation which will not be good on your home life.

While office confrontations will happen, it is important to know that you have to be able to handle them in the proper manner. While you may in fact feel like screaming at the top of your lungs at your adversary, you know in your heart you just can’t do that.

Here are some ways to help you ensure your office confrontation gets resolved both quickly and appropriately:

•    Take a Breather: Don’t attempt to fix the confrontation right away. Allow yourself and your adversary some much needed time to cool off. In fact, once a confrontation happens, you should avoid the satiation for at least the rest of the day if possible. Attempting to fix the problem too quickly can lead to unlevel heads continuing to butt.
•    Take it Outside: This doesn’t mean to challenge your office adversary to a fight or duel outside, but you should resolve the confrontation outside of the office. While an office confrontation is never a good thing, keeping it going at any level at the office is a terrible idea. It is better to approach your adversary outside of work at a neutral setting where you can hopefully come to a positive resolution.
•    Extend the Olive Branch: Be the first to make the right move. Leaders don’t wait, they take action. It is no different with an office confrontation. Instead of being stubborn and waiting for your adversary to make the first move with a fix to the problem, go right up to them and offer to buy them a drink after work so you can discuss the confrontation further.
•    Keep an Open Mind: Remember that some people will just never see things the way you do. However, if you are closed minded then you are no better. Keep an open mind when trying to resolve your confrontation problems and try to see all points of view. Being thick-headed will get you nowhere fast.
•    Practice Tolerance: It may be that you never totally see eye to eye with your adversary and that’s okay. However, you do have to work with them so you should practice tolerance so you can continue to do your job in the most efficient manner possible.

It isn’t really a matter of will an office confrontation happen to you, but rather when. When a confrontation does happen, remember that you have a choice. Either you can continue to stress and seethe about your adversary or you can handle things in the appropriate manner and get back to doing your job, which is what you are in the office to do each day anyway.