How to Handle Anxiety About Difficult Conversations with Amy Gallo

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (0:00)
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Hi, I'm Morra Aarons-Mele, host of The Anxious Achiever. Today, I'm going to bring you one of our most downloaded and one of my most favorite episodes from our archives. It's a classic. The Anxious Achiever has been at it for a long time. We have over 300 episodes, and honestly, they're all still more relevant than ever. You may hear details in this episode that reminds you it's from another time, but I guarantee that the advice you get will be as crisp and meaningful and the stories as resonant as before. If you have a favorite episode of the show, let me know. I'd love to air it again or even re-record it for you fresh. Enjoy this classic Anxious Achiever episode.
Do you avoid conflict and difficult conversations at work? If you're human, you probably do. It's kind of a superpower and I've met people who can do it. But I think most of us, we don't like feeling conflict. It makes us anxious. It's really hard. It's common to get flooded with emotions in the middle of a tough conversation, right? The stakes feel high and so we avoid feedback and criticism and difficult conversations both giving it and receiving it. But conflict expert Amy Gallo says, honestly, avoiding conflict, it's worse for your anxiety in the long run, and it's healthy to have conflict at work. We just need to understand how to manage it, and that's what she's going to help us do today.
I'm Morra Aarons-Mele and this is The Anxious Achiever, the show that looks at the intersection of mental health and leadership and work, and asks, how can we do it all better? I want to just leave you with a tidbit as we head into the show. Amy and I are going to talk about lots of practical approaches to managing conflict, especially if you're an anxious achiever. Something that really has changed managing conflict for me, especially difficult conversations, is just a little phrase that I learned, and actually my husband helped me with it. And it's kind of a catchphrase. When I'm heading into a difficult conversation, I prepare myself, I write out bullets and talking points. And when I get flustered and when I get anxious in the moment, I pause and I might say, that's not how I see things. When I go into sort of emotional hijacking, I can always come back to this neutral phrase. So we'll talk about sort of emotional heuristics that we can all use to manage conflict more healthily and make it a tool for growth at work. Here's my conversation with Amy Gallo.