Hi, Italy's Hugh, and you're listening to Ted Talk Daily, today's talk from business consultant Anastasia Kenwright offers an antidote to workplace drama.

If you've ever gotten a passive aggressive, nasty gram from a colleague or you just need to vent about an assignment going epically wrong.

Give this a listen. Not only will you get practical steps to respond better to the drama that happens at work, stick around for a good joke you can use about yellow Starburst, the candy. OK, here it is, Anastasiya Pen, right at TED at Wells Fargo in 2020.

All right, I have a close, tight knit circle of friends, we're all in different cities and we're all in different areas, from local news to city government to law financial services.

And despite those different areas, we seem to share similar stories of workplace drama.

Now, I define workplace drama as an annoyance that adds additional stress to the job. So, again, it's when people get on your nerves, not the job itself.

So as we're going through these stories and realizing there has to be a better way for us to coexist with our co-workers without this much drama. So I created a few steps that have been working for me and I'm happy to share with you guys today. Step one, rewind and reflect, also known as What Did I Do?

I want you guys to all replay your most recent workplace drama situation in your head like a movie, ignore all the emotion and just focus on you.

But for now, let's just think about this hypothetical.

So you're on a group project. You each have your own individual assignments and then you all divide up the work, but then someone becomes unresponsive, not answering calls.

They go ghost. Then you or someone else has to now pick up that additional slack. So in a brief, small, very tiny lapse in judgment, you went to the nearby co-worker, then all of a sudden your ghost comes back and they surprisingly know everything you just said. Now, what did I do in this situation?

I would to someone who was not my confidant. Why would I do that? Sometimes we create this unspoken bond with people that only exist in our heads. They don't owe me their discretion. I just assumed it was there. So we're not going to go down a rabbit hole trying to figure out why they did that. It doesn't matter. They did it. But the goal in this step is self reflection. We need to focus on what did we do so we can avoid it in the future.

Step two. Come back to reality, also known as it needs to stop. OK, so you guys ever think about problems before you get to work? Oh, it's just me. Well, I'm guilty of it, I think about all of these situations in my head and then I get mad just thinking about it.

So I'm telling myself, no, you're just being prepared, Stacey. You are just making sure that you can handle whatever they've got to throw at you, but you're not. What you're really doing is setting yourself up and creating this anxiety in your head that doesn't exist. Then we also have to be careful about listing that other people's made up scenarios. Here's what I mean. Let's say you're in the break room and you're talking to some coworkers. Then all of a sudden another co-worker comes in.

Now, they seem to just be in deep dive, not overly cheerful, but they're not rude.

They come in, they walk out.

Then the coworkers over here begin to diagnose what they feel is wrong with that person. They're saying things like, oh, they're just mad they didn't get the job or they're saying, oh, no, no, no, during this season, they're just always upset.

And you sitting here like, yeah, yeah, that must be it. You're listening to this as if this is facts. Meanwhile, this co-worker can be in deep thought about literally anything they can to just open a packet of earth, got for yellow back to bed, and then just try to figure out what happened.

But you're over here listening and you're listening to their made up scenario that now could impact how you choose to interact with that person throughout the day, whether we're creating fake stories in our head or listening to other people made up stories, it needs to stop the goal in the stop.

Stop stressing over things that haven't happened. All right, that three. That it released. It's good to have it, buddy. This is your coach, your cheerleader, your therapist, whatever you need them to be in the moment. This is not like that person is the one that just happened to be in your side airside. You have an established relationship with your buddy. Now, here's another scenario. You're getting ready to tell a customer, a client, something that they just don't want to hear.

So as you're in the middle of the spiel, up comes another co-worker and they interrupt you and then said the exact same thing you were saying. So you can't make a scene in front of a customer. You just so you got to sit back and just listen as they do this and you're burning up inside. So what do we do? We go to our vet buddy. We talk about it, we get mad, and that's the time for that.

Get mad, get angry, cur scream. Do whatever you need to do to get it out.

Now, here's the hard part. You then have to switch that tone to positivity. I truly believe in positive and negative energy and it has a way of controlling our moods throughout the day. You got to think of things like, OK, where do I go from here, what can I do differently? And then if you're the vet buddy, is your responsibility to lead your friend back to the positive?

Now, the other hard part, you have to then apply those learnings to the situation, you can't carry that resentment around.

If you do that, one off situation now becomes a pattern pattern behavior is harder to ignore than a one off situation.

The goal in this step is let's turn our productive session. Well, let's turn our vict session into a productive conversation. That for learn a new language also known as We Need to talk. I personally don't like to pick up the phone at work, I just don't I feel like whatever you need to say to me can be an instant message or an email. That is my work language.

The only problem with that, you can't hear tone through an email. So I read emails the same way I speak. So I'm pretty sure I misinterpreted some tones before unless I know you. So here's an example. I'm gonna show you guys an email and then I'ma read it out loud. Thank you for reaching out about my group at this time. We will not need any additional support going forward if I feel we need help. If you want to have to reach out per my life, email Atash below.

I've outlined what I do and what you do so I can avoid this in the future. As always, thank you for your partnership, guys.

That's how you read it, because there are certain words in there that if you hear or if you see in an email, it is safe to assume they typed it with their middle fingers.

I didn't know about it. I know, I know. I think I messed up some people's email.

They're correcting now with all that said, you have to know when it is time to pick up the phone. You have to know when it is time to have a face to face in these face to face. Conversations are not easy. They are difficult, but they are necessary. The goal is to try to understand the other person's perspective. So you start the conversation with things like, OK, you got upset when I or you'll say things like, OK, you're already had the situation handled and then I.

So that way you can see exactly where they're coming from. Also, don't try to make people like you. We all have our own upbringings, we all have our own experiences and we all have our own communication styles as the new generations are entering the workforce. We're also adapting to it. Meetings are now emails. Emails are now text. All sites are now Skype. So as we're adjusting to that, we need to at least try to understand what type of style of communication they use.

The goal in that step is to really understand their work language and accept the fact that it may be different than yours. Step five, recognize and protect, also known as we need to take a walk, so here's my last scenario for one of my teacher friends. You're about to have a meeting with the parent, and prior to it, you and a co-worker, you kind of discussed it and the co-worker tells you, I got your back.

I'm going to agree with your recommendations. So you're kind of sad on them because they've burned you before, but you've had the we need to talk, so you're like, we're in sync now. I'm going to trust them. You go through the meeting, the parent disagrees with you, and like clockwork, the coworker agrees with the parent in front of you, making you look ridiculous.

So you just again, we can't make a scene in front of people, right. So got to hold it in. And then after the meeting, that same co-worker has all the audacity comes up to you. It's that crazy meeting, right? Yeah. The testing unit does the test, so that's the perfect time to just go off, right. This is a repeat offender. You walked away and they came back with it.

But we're trying to avoid workplace drama and not take a cannonball leap into it. So we have to walk away. You leave that conversation by taking the first available exit, you're not doing this for them, you're doing this for you, you have to protect your energy. Don't try to figure out why they would do this and no more coming to Jesus conversation. It is what it is. They did what they did and given the opportunity, they'd probably do it again.

But you now know that you now recognize that, so that way you can act accordingly. We typically try to set expectations, our expectations on other people and then get disappointed when they don't follow through.

We have to learn we have to learn to accept people where they are and I just ourselves to handle those situations.

The goal in this step is to recognize when it is time to professionally walk away from someone.

Guys, I realize these depth may come off as saying, take the high road and people always say just take the high road, and they describe it as some elegant path of righteousness filled with rainbows and unicorns is not the.

It's embarrassing, it's humiliating. It leaves this not of resentment in the pit of your stomach. And as you're traveling down this amazing high road, you see billboards and things you should have said and things you should. Did you go over there?

You look at the easy road, no challenge, no right about a thing. But I have to admit, the more I travel down this road, it does get a little easier. Petty situations, they don't bother me as much. I learned little nuggets here and there. And as I continue down this path. There seems to be more opportunities waiting for me. I have like minded people who want to connect with me, projects that people want me on, leaders reaching out because they heard about me through someone else.

In the best part, the need to even look at the easy road is no longer there. Guys, we're not going to change the way adults act in the workplace. We are not.

And for that reason, there will always be workplace drama.

But if we stick to these steps and put in the work that comes with it, we can learn to avoid it. Guys, thank you for being my buddies and thank you so much for your time. PR ex.