Don't react too fast!

I have personally seen and been involved in highly emotional, personal, stressful situation in communication in projects.

When there is verbal attact, usually the person who is receiving the attact will be fighting back by instinct ... and the instinct is always telling us to do something silly ...

To communicate properly under stressful verbal attact, we need to put the personal emotion aside. Look at the real substance of the things being talked about. Not the choices of words being used. For example, "It sound stupid to me that this thing is to be done in this way ..."
Usually, we will automatically respond to the word "stupid" with anger. No, we should look at the substance: " ... for this thing to be done this way ..."

We can ask, "yeah, this way seems not so good AND I am open for suggestion. Your input is very much valuable for helping me ..." If you say in this way, the other party will have to be involved.

If this guy says "no, you are the consultant, you should know the best ..." Then, you can say, "I have tried my best to obtain the point of view of most of the key stakeholders on my (best) solution ... and so far they have given favourable replies ..."

We need to focus on the fact and the reason to support what you say. It is not emotion that supports us. But the real reasons will back us up.

The objectives is to get what we want in "good terms". Don't react too fast! :)