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A demanding customer, an indecisive client, or a supplier who misses another deadline can test an entrepreneur’s patience and judgment. Affect labeling, the practice of putting feelings into words, offers a way to recognize that frustration before it shapes an expensive response. Understanding what you feel, questioning what you assume, and taking responsibility for your next move can help protect business relationships while preserving the standards your company depends on.
BEFORE YOU HIT SEND: HOW AFFECT LABELING CAN HELP ENTREPRENEURS HANDLE DIFFICULT PEOPLE
By FranGrow Think Team
An important client questions a recommendation you have already explained twice, while a supplier sends another vague update about an order that should have arrived yesterday. You have payroll approaching, an employee waiting for direction, and very little patience for either conversation. By the time you begin your reply, the immediate problem has acquired a personal meaning. These people do not appreciate your time, understand your pressure, or respect the effort you put into their business.
Perhaps someone has behaved carelessly, and perhaps a firm response is overdue. The difficulty is that frustration can become entangled with assumptions about another person’s motives, leaving you to negotiate the delivery problem while also feeling disrespected in the same email. For an entrepreneur, that is a consequential combination because the response may affect a relationship, a purchasing decision, or others’ willingness to share uncomfortable information with you.
Affect labeling offers a practical place to begin. In psychology, the term refers to putting an emotional experience into words, such as recognizing that you feel disappointed, anxious, embarrassed, or angry. Research suggests that this process can influence emotional responding under certain conditions, although its effects vary and should not be treated as a guaranteed way to become calm. Its business application is a reasoned extension of that research: recognizing your emotional state may help you examine a difficult situation before deciding how to handle it.
Recognizing the Feeling Without Judging the Person
There is a substantial difference between identifying your emotion and attaching a label to someone else. Calling a customer unreasonable describes your judgment of that customer; acknowledging that you feel irritated describes what is happening within you. The first can encourage you to build a case against the person, while the second gives you something more specific to examine. You might discover that the irritation comes from an unexpected demand, uncertainty about payment, or embarrassment that your original explanation failed to answer the customer’s question.
Precision matters because a broad description, such as “being upset,” leaves several possible problems unresolved. Consider a hypothetical business owner whose client repeatedly requests revisions beyond the agreed scope. The owner may initially experience the situation as anger toward a demanding client, then recognize a more complicated response: resentment about unpaid work, anxiety about losing the account, and reluctance to enforce a boundary that should have been established earlier. Those distinctions point toward different actions, including clarifying the agreement, pricing additional work, and addressing the owner’s own avoidance.
The language you use privately should describe your experience without turning speculation into evidence. Saying that you feel anxious because an invoice remains unpaid identifies an emotion and an observable circumstance. Deciding that the client intends to take advantage of you adds a conclusion that may require further investigation. That conclusion could eventually prove justified, but emotional intensity alone cannot establish it.
What Emotional Ownership Actually Requires
The idea that you own your feelings and thoughts is useful when it directs attention toward responsibility, but it needs a careful interpretation. People do not deliberately select every emotion or thought that arises, and another person’s behavior can have a legitimate emotional impact. A broken promise can spark anger, while a serious financial setback can provoke fear, even though neither response is chosen. Emotional ownership means acknowledging that experience and accepting responsibility for how you examine, express, and act upon it.
For an entrepreneur, this distinction preserves accountability on both sides of the relationship. A supplier remains responsible for a missed commitment, and the business owner remains responsible for clearly communicating the consequences. A client may be in arrears, and the owner must decide whether to extend further credit, suspend work, or pursue another appropriate remedy. Recognizing frustration does not transfer the other party’s obligations onto you, nor does it require you to remain agreeable while the business absorbs preventable damage.
Owning a thought also means allowing it to be questioned. You may believe a prospect is wasting your time, yet the available facts may show that they lack financing, need a partner’s approval, or have not received a clear explanation of the investment. Examining those possibilities can improve qualification and communication even when the eventual decision is to stop pursuing the opportunity. The purpose is to reach a sound conclusion supported by sufficient evidence.
What the Research Supports, and Where It Stops
According to a study in 2007 published in Psychological Science, Matthew Lieberman and colleagues found that labeling emotional images was associated with a reduced response in the amygdala and other limbic regions compared with other encoding tasks. The researchers also observed increased activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, suggesting a possible pathway through which language can influence emotional reactivity. These findings support a relationship between affect labeling and emotional processing within the experimental task; they do not establish that naming frustration will resolve a business dispute or improve profitability.
A later study by Katharina Kircanski, Lieberman, and Michelle Craske examined people fearful of spiders during exposure to a live spider. At a one-week follow-up, the affect-labeling group showed a lower skin conductance response than the comparison groups. Still, participants did not report significantly different levels of fear. That difference matters because a measurable physiological effect and a person’s conscious sense of relief do not necessarily move together. An entrepreneur should therefore avoid judging the entire exercise by whether irritation disappears immediately.
There is also evidence against treating the technique as universally helpful. Research published in PLOS ONE in 2022 found that labeling reduced distress in a condition involving more intensely unpleasant pictures, while increasing distress in a condition involving less intensely unpleasant pictures. The practical caution is to use the tool proportionately, without turning every minor annoyance into an extended investigation of your emotions. These studies concern emotional responses under specific research conditions, and their application to leadership remains an informed interpretation rather than a proven business outcome.
When Entrepreneurial Impatience Enters the Conversation
Entrepreneurs frequently have legitimate reasons to move quickly, including limited cash, competitive pressure, seasonal opportunities, and commitments to employees or investors. Trouble develops when a preference for speed becomes an unstated obligation imposed on everyone else. A prospect who takes several days to review a proposal may be acting carefully, even as the owner interprets the delay as a lack of seriousness. A supplier working within the agreed turnaround may appear unresponsive to someone who has mentally moved the deadline forward.
In those situations, labeling impatience can expose the underlying concern. An owner may recognize anxiety about the sales pipeline, disappointment over a slower month, or discomfort with a decision that now rests with someone else. That recognition does not eliminate the need for follow-up, but it can change its content. Instead of sending an increasingly forceful request for a decision, the owner can ask what remains unresolved, identify who else is involved, and agree on a realistic next step.
Franchise development provides a useful hypothetical example. After several conversations, a candidate asks another question about investment requirements, and the development executive begins to feel annoyed. Before concluding that the candidate is unqualified, the executive can examine whether the question reflects inadequate preparation, confusion about the information, or understandable caution about a major commitment. Each possibility calls for a different response, and identifying the source of the executive’s impatience can help keep that assessment fair.
Turning Recognition Into a Business Response
A workable approach begins with briefly naming the feeling, then separating the observable event from the interpretation attached to it. Suppose a supplier misses a confirmed delivery, threatening a restaurant promotion. The owner can acknowledge anger and concern about disappointing customers, then establish the facts: what was promised, what has arrived, what remains available, and when a replacement can realistically be obtained. That sequence keeps the emotional experience visible while directing attention toward the operational decision.
Before sending the reply, identify what the business needs from the exchange. It may require a confirmed delivery time, an alternative product, an explanation of the failure, or a decision about future purchasing. A useful hypothetical response might read: “The order was confirmed for Tuesday, and its absence puts Friday’s promotion at risk. Please confirm by noon whether you can deliver the full order tomorrow, so we can finalize an alternative if necessary.” The message communicates urgency, establishes a deadline, and explains the consequence without requiring an argument about the supplier’s character.
The same discipline applies to difficult customers and clients, although their circumstances will differ. An owner can recognize that they are feeling pressured by a last-minute request and still explain that completing it will require additional fees or a revised deadline. If the customer becomes abusive, the owner can set a clear limit on the conversation. Affect labeling is most useful when it supports a considered response that addresses the problem; repeatedly naming frustration without making the necessary decision leaves the business exposed.
The Response Becomes Part of the Leadership Standard
An owner’s handling of irritation also provides employees with a working example of what the organization permits. If a manager responds to every complaint by attacking the customer’s motives, employees receive little guidance about investigation, service recovery, or appropriate boundaries. When the manager instead identifies the issue, checks the facts, and chooses a proportionate response, the team has a clearer example to follow. This is a practical leadership argument, rather than a claim that affect-labeling studies have measured company culture.
Recurring frustration deserves an operational review as well as personal reflection. Frequent disputes over revisions may indicate an unclear scope of work, while constant delivery emergencies may expose weak purchasing arrangements or unrealistic planning. An entrepreneur who repeatedly feels interrupted may need better delegation or more explicit decision authority. Emotional awareness can help identify where to look, but improving the underlying process requires management action.
Business ownership will continue to involve people whose priorities, pace, and expectations differ from your own. Success requires enough judgment to distinguish an inconvenience from a failure, a difficult question from a personal challenge, and a necessary boundary from an impulsive reaction.
Naming what you feel can help you begin that work with greater clarity, provided you follow it with evidence, an appropriate decision, and communication that serves the business. You may still be irritated when the conversation ends, yet have handled it in a way that protects your standards and leaves you confident in the decision.
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Sources and Websites
- Lieberman, M. D., and colleagues. “Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity in Response to Affective Stimuli.” Psychological Science, May 2007. Research findings cited from the publisher’s abstract.
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x
- Kircanski, K., Lieberman, M. D., and Craske, M. G. “Feelings Into Words: Contributions of Language to Exposure Therapy.” Psychological Science, first published online August 16, 2012. Research findings cited from the publisher’s abstract.
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797612443830
- Levy-Gigi, E., and Shamay-Tsoory, S. “Affect Labeling: The Role of Timing and Intensity.” PLOS ONE, December 29, 2022. Open-access original research examining timing, emotional intensity, and differing effects on distress.
- https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0279303
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About Gary Occhiogrosso, Managing Parther
Gary Occhiogrosso is the Founder and Managing Partner of Franchise Growth Solutions, a full-service franchise advisory and development firm dedicated to helping emerging and established brands grow responsibly through strategic planning, franchise development, operational excellence, and professional franchise sales. During a career spanning nearly four decades, Gary has worked with hundreds of franchise organizations and has participated in the development and sale of more than 1,000 franchise locations across a broad range of industries.
Recognized as one of the franchise industry’s leading authorities, Gary has been named among the Top 100 Franchise Influencers and the Top 25 Fast Casual Executives. His work focuses on helping entrepreneurs, founders, and franchisors build scalable businesses through disciplined growth strategies, sound unit economics, operational consistency, and responsible franchising.
Gary is a frequent speaker, author, and publisher whose Executive Edition articles are designed to help entrepreneurs make informed business decisions based on experience, research, and practical application rather than industry hype or conventional wisdom.
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Author’s Note
This article also reflects the author’s professional observations and practical experience accumulated over nearly four decades advising entrepreneurs, franchisors, franchisees, and investors throughout North America. Practical experience has been combined with publicly available research to provide balanced commentary intended for educational purposes.