Coachamatic

In response to a humorous post about winning arguments, I found this: I think your tips are stupid…! As negative comments go, this is mild, mild, mild. With an emoticon at the end, I might even have taken it as a joke. As is, though, I had to assume she meant it. Rather ironic that it was at the foot of a post that discussed avoiding insulting remarks when expressing disagreement.

I’ve noticed a recent flurry of “how to respond to negative comments on blogs” articles, including posts by ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse, Flyte’s Rich Brooks, and Lorelle VanFossen. Seth Godin wrote one on dealing with an angry customer that the Blog Herald adapted to commenters. I guess it must be on a lot of minds right now.

Much of the advice offered in those articles is reasonable and comes from seasoned bloggers who’ve been through the wringer a time or two. As both a blogger and a conflict resolution expert, I’m adding my decade of professional work as a mediator and conflict management coach to try to distill the best wisdom down to a few key approaches:

Beware of diagnosing. It’s sooo tempting to pop-psychologize the angry commenter and soothe your own ego in the process. Bottom line? You have no way to really know what neuroses, personality problems or other motivations were behind their comments. Better approach: Look for the equal human in front of you. What if the person who wrote that is a reasonable person and is ticked off? How would you be interpreting their words differently than if you labeled them a jerk, or worse?

It’s not about backing down or not. We spend far too much time in this culture “standing our ground” and calling people who change their minds “wafflers.” Changing your viewpoint is called learning. It’s called being open to new information that influences your thinking. When you frame an unpleasant exchange with a commenter as “who’s going to back down first,” you’ve chosen to fight before you’ve typed a word.

The written word’s a whole lot harder to discern than the spoken. Research has shown that you’re much more likely to misinterpret meaning in something written than when it’s spoken aloud. It turns out that tone of voice and facial expression give you a huge amount of data to work with and without it, you risk over- and under-emphasizing some remarks.

People don’t press your buttons, you do. You may say, “He pressed my buttons,” but it’s more accurate to say, “He did something, and because I have the hot buttons I do, it really ticked me off.” Your hot buttons are not necessarily the same as mine. So someone who writes a certain something on your blog may drive you bonkers while that same comment on mine might barely cause a blink. When you’re ticked off, it’s as much your own “stuff” feeding that experience as the things the other person did.

Get into their movie. I love this phrase, coined by communications expert Rebecca Shafir. It’s hard to do, but if you can step into the commenter’s “movie” or experience with the same suspension of disbelief that you did at, say, the Lord of the Rings movies, then you might actually learn something from them before your frustration clouds your vision.

Engage them if you can. As several of the bloggers mentioned above said, one of your best strategies is to try to engage the commenter, if they hang around long enough to let you. Good questions, good curiosity and a real desire to understand their viewpoint helps you improve your blog, model great behavior, and just maybe, build a welcome regular reader. You can engage in your comments section or approach them by email if they seem safe enough.

You certainly maintain the right to delete a vicious or unduly rank comment—I make that known in my own blog’s comments policy. I haven’t done it yet, though. There’s too much opportunity presented by a real conversation, even a typed one.

Posted on Sep 23rd 06 by Tammy Lenski.

Tammy helps people talk out their differences and build stronger work and home relationships in the process. She does this as a coach, mediator and trainer and works with people worldwide. http://www.lenski.com

Other posts on Coachamatic by Tammy Lenski.