When I was working in consulting, I was assigned to engagement developing a credit scoring system for small businesses in the Caribbean. I was thrilled to serve on this engagement, because I had written my thesis at Duke on nearly the same topic, and this would be my chance to implement it professionally.

When I joined the team, my engagement manager said she was impressed with my work and gave me additional responsibilities. I took on a stand-alone role and built out a client team who worked with me daily. After a month, my teammates mentioned that the associate partner had reported to the engagement manager and associates that I was performing poorly.

Hearing this from my teammates, rather than directly from the associate partner, upset me. I was also confused to hear positive feedback from my manager and something different from the partner. I had a couple of choices to make: Should I acknowledge this incident and talk with the partner directly? Should I be angry at not receiving the feedback directly from its source?

I decided I needed to handle the issue with the partner head-on, with an empathetic approach, to understand why he was critical of my performance.

Just as I feared, the first part of the conversation was uncomfortable, but as we continued to dig deeper, I learned that he was stretched across six clients and was “in the window” to be elected partner in a couple of months. Additionally, his travel to the Caribbean was having a significant emotional burden on his family. He thought I was doing poorly, not because I actually was, but because he wasn’t hearing about my work. I had to figure out how to keep him regularly informed of my progress.

I decided I needed to handle the issue with the partner head-on, with an empathetic approach, to understand why he was critical of my performance.

By asking him for feedback, I was able to clear up the performance issue and we moved on to more important topics. I offered him a couple of proposals for re-scoping the project, suggestions he incorporated into a subsequent meeting. After our conversation, we jointly developed a plan to test my ideas. In the end, our underwriting system achieved a 98% repayment rate – a number that most banks in the developed world aspire to achieve.

Though hesitant at first to bring up the critical feedback I had received from my teammates, I learned that working through uncomfortable issues directly – and with empathy – builds stronger relationships in the toughest of circumstances.

More importantly, I learned that there is often a lot going on for people in their professional or personal lives. If they are short-tempered or appear to be frustrated, I should remind myself that they might be in the midst of their own big struggle.