I can fully admit, with a lot of training, mentorship, therapy and even more training, I wasn’t always the best manager. I shouted across the newsroom when emotions flared. I didn’t step in for journalists in verbal altercations with others. I sat silent while someone spoke badly about a coworker.

I was reminded of that this morning when it was reported on Breaker that two New York Times employees had “an epic blow-up” about a story in the works that “resulted in an HR complaint about a ‘death threat’.”

You might shrug this off as an overreaction by the editor or as an overreaction by the reporter. Don’t.

Newsrooms are highly charged environments. We’re surrounded by stories of war, death, harm, politics, scoundrels and wrongdoing. The work is a calling and a mission to some. Long hours are spent chasing down sources, capturing the right visual, looking at spreadsheets full of data, crafting stories, sharing them and engaging with our audiences.

And we’re doing all this under the unwilling motto of “Do more with less,” as resources and jobs disappear. The news never stops. The stories never stop. The emotions never stop.

More times than I care to admit, I didn’t pause and think about the words I was about to speak. As newsroom leaders, it’s our responsibility to step in and manage all these competing emotions. It’s an important reminder your words and actions carry more weight than you will ever realize.

How do we work in this volatile space and treat each other with respect? Stressful situations can immediately trigger a fight-or-flight response. How do we learn to choose empathy and understanding over fight?

Newsrooms have traditionally been full of egos, loud voices and heated back-and-forths. It was just the way things were done. But it was never OK, and it’s time we changed our norms.

Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years, sometimes the hard way.

Pause the conversation

The simplest solution, admittedly very hard to put into practice, is to just step away. Be aware that temperatures and voices are rising.

It’s OK to step back and say you need a break before continuing a conversation. Even if you’re on deadline, five minutes can make or break a long-term work relationship. On the flip side, it’s not OK to say “I think you need to …” to the other person you are engaging with.

It’s perfectly fine to voice opinions and advocate for yourself, but acknowledge when a situation is going south by saying, “I think I need to think about this on my own for a minute. Let’s take a pause and continue this conversation in a few minutes.”

Go take a walk, drink some water, take a deep breath. Gather your thoughts, write them down if that helps, then reengage.

Your words matter

As journalists, we obsess over words in our work. We should take the same care and attention to detail in the way we communicate with each other. In my workshops, I often share how amazing it is that people who work in communications are terrible at communicating. What may seem small, or intended as a joke, sarcasm or gallows humor, can be taken as a threat or harmful to someone we work with.

It’s important to understand who you work with and how they communicate. In our leadership workshops, we teach the power of employing user manuals for your team. These simple forms can be used to understand:

• How your teams work,
• What their values are,
• How they prefer feedback,
• And, most importantly, how to communicate with them.

If you learn these things about them, you can begin to tailor how you communicate with them. We now find ourselves working across multiple generations, places, abilities, needs and languages. These things matter, and it is your job as managers to know and understand the differences in your communication styles.

Just practicing these two things will go a long way in earning respect and trust, but it’s just the beginning.

I reached out to our faculty here at Poynter for their tips as well.

Megan Griffith-Greene, faculty

• Slow yourself down — a lot of people, when they get heated, talk quickly. If you breathe, pause, listen and respond more slowly, you can model a conversation pattern that feels calm and collected even when you don’t feel that way. And people are more likely to match your energy.
• Engage in active listening and make sure the other person knows you’ve understood their point. Repeating the criticism/demand back to who you’re arguing with — as you understood it — can help prevent the other party from repeating their point over and over again. (A lot of people in arguments don’t feel like the other person has heard them or understood so they just repeat their demand over and over again.) It also gives them an opportunity to self-edit once they’ve heard how they have come across. This slows down the conversation, which is helpful for defusing the emotion.
• Bring in a third party if you hit an impasse. 

Kristen Hare, faculty, director of craft and local news

• Consider the different generations you’re dealing with. It matters. Younger people might respond differently to text messages than they would to phone calls. They will read more into ways of communicating than you might because they communicate differently. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t call or end that text with a period. Be yourself. But consider how it will be received and work with them early to do some generational translating.

Fernanda Camarena, faculty 

• In our leadership programs, I teach a session on dealing with conflict and how to have difficult conversations. One thing I always say is: Speak less, speak last. Sometimes the most effective thing we can do is to create space and listen carefully. Listening helps you understand what really matters to the other person. It builds trust and helps people feel safe, seen and heard. I actually think conflict can be beautiful if we approach it with intention. Conflict means people care, and that something important is at stake — that’s an incredible opportunity. So remember, the simplest thing you can do is to speak less, speak last.