A recent workshop left me thinking about something that has very little to do with the workshop content itself.

Two experienced professionals got into a disagreement near the end of the session. What began as feedback gradually became personal. Within a very short period, the emotional temperature changed completely.

As a facilitator, I intervened.

But the experience made me reflect on a question that is relevant far beyond workshops:

When something happens at work and we become emotionally affected, where does someone else’s responsibility end and our own responsibility begin?

The three things we often confuse

When conflict happens, we tend to combine three different things.

1. What happened

This is the observable event.

Someone interrupted me.

Someone disagreed with me.

Someone questioned my decision.

Someone gave me negative feedback.

These are things we can potentially establish by looking at what actually happened.

2. What I felt

I felt embarrassed.

I felt angry.

I felt dismissed.

I felt disrespected.

I felt attacked.

Those feelings are real.

They don’t need to be argued away.

3. What I assumed

“They don’t respect me.”

“They deliberately tried to undermine me.”

“They always behave like this.”

“They are trying to make me look bad.”

This is where things become complicated.

Because the third category is not an observation.

It is an interpretation.

And interpretations are hypotheses.

We often treat them as facts.

The escalation loop

Consider what happens when someone gives us feedback.

They say:

“I think you could have handled that differently.”

We hear:

“You handled it badly.”

Then we interpret:

“They think I’m incompetent.”

Then we feel:

“They don’t respect me.”

And then we respond to the interpretation rather than the original feedback.

The other person responds to our reaction.

We interpret their reaction as further evidence that our original assumption was correct.

And the cycle continues.

Event → interpretation → emotion → reaction → counter-reaction → stronger interpretation.

This is how relatively small disagreements can become deeply personal.

Where does the facilitator’s responsibility begin?

This question became particularly relevant to me during the workshop.

A facilitator has a responsibility to create the conditions for productive learning.

That means establishing boundaries, helping people distinguish feedback from personal attacks, intervening when a conversation becomes destructive, and bringing the group back to the purpose of the discussion.

But there is an important limit.

A facilitator cannot manage everyone’s emotions.

Nor should the goal of facilitation be to ensure that nobody ever feels uncomfortable.

Learning often involves discomfort.

Feedback can be uncomfortable.

Disagreement can be uncomfortable.

Being challenged can be uncomfortable.

The facilitator’s responsibility is not to eliminate discomfort.

It is to make sure that discomfort doesn’t become personal harm or destructive behavior.

What about the participant’s responsibility?

This is where professional maturity comes in.

If someone says something that hurts me, I can acknowledge that I am hurt.

I can even tell them:

“What you said affected me.”

But there is another question I need to ask myself:

What am I going to do with that feeling?

Do I want to understand what actually happened?

Do I want to ask for clarification?

Do I want to provide feedback?

Do I want to step away and return to the conversation later?

Or do I immediately assign motives and blame?

The feeling may not be my choice.

My response still becomes my responsibility.

Emotional intelligence isn’t emotional suppression

There is sometimes a misunderstanding about emotional intelligence.

It doesn’t mean becoming so calm that nothing affects you.

It doesn’t mean pretending that criticism doesn’t hurt.

It doesn’t mean accepting inappropriate behavior silently.

It means becoming aware of what is happening inside you without automatically allowing that emotion to dictate your behavior.

A useful pause is:

What happened?

What am I feeling?

What am I assuming?

What do I actually know?

What is within my control?

That pause can change the entire conversation.

The rational brain doesn’t always show up on time

There is another complication.

When people are highly emotionally activated, explaining responsibility, cognitive bias or emotional regulation to them may not work.

Not because they are incapable of understanding it.

Because they may not be in a state where they can process it effectively.

That’s why good facilitation sometimes requires two different interventions.

First: regulate the situation.

Stop the escalation. Create space. Establish the boundary.

Then: create reflection.

Once people are calmer, help them examine what happened, what they felt, what they assumed and what they could have done differently.

Trying to teach reflection while someone is emotionally flooded is often ineffective.

A different definition of psychological safety

This experience also changed the way I think about psychological safety.

Psychological safety should not mean:

“Nobody should ever say anything that makes me uncomfortable.”

Nor should it mean:

“Everyone can say whatever they want because people should be able to handle feedback.”

There is a middle ground.

People should be able to challenge ideas, decisions and behaviors without attacking someone’s character.

And people should be able to receive uncomfortable feedback without immediately turning it into a personal battle.

That’s a much more useful definition of psychological safety.

The real skill

The real leadership skill isn’t avoiding emotion.

It is learning to work with emotion without becoming controlled by it.

As leaders, facilitators and professionals, we will inevitably experience:

• criticism
• disagreement
• misunderstanding
• frustration
• perceived unfairness
• difficult personalities
• uncomfortable feedback

We cannot control all of those.

But we can become better at distinguishing:

What happened.

What I felt.

What I assumed.

What I can do next.

That is where self-awareness becomes practical.

And perhaps the most important lesson is this:

Your feelings are real.

They deserve to be understood.

But they don’t automatically tell you what happened, what the other person intended, or who is responsible for what you do next.

That responsibility ultimately comes back to us.

I explore these concepts in my Advanced ScrumMaster and Leadership workshops, where we go beyond frameworks and certifications to work on the real challenges of leadership, facilitation, feedback, conflict, and decision-making.

If you are dealing with a leadership challenge and would rather explore it one-on-one, I also work with leaders through 1:1 Discovery Sessions—a focused conversation to unpack the situation, challenge assumptions, and discover a way forward.