Always Keep Your Cool

Towards the start of my career I was negotiating with a vendor for my company. We were in the final stages of putting together a complex contract.

Right before we were to have a meeting to decide the final terms, I realized that they were cheating us. Not a little, but a lot. I was stunned. I looked at everything over and over to make sure, but sure enough, they were complete snakes.

Before I knew it, they had arrived and we were in our conference room, my boss comes in, and we start. I hadn't had a chance to talk to my boss about it, but I was determined to show him that I wasn't going to let these guys take advantage of us.

I carefully walked them through the deal points, confirming the various aspects, and then I pounced. "But if you're already providing that part over here, why are you charging us again for it over here?" They were shocked that I had brought this up, and just started stammering through what was obviously a weak defense.

I was simply furious.

After a little while, my boss said "There seems to be a problem here. Let us go over this again and we can talk later this week." They got up and left.

I sat there in the conference room with my boss, and now that the others were gone, I was smiling.

My boss looked at me and said "Why are you smiling?" I told him that I was happy that I'd read the contract carefully, and that I had caught them cheating, and had stood up for our company."

My boss said "Don't look for a pat on the back just because you read the contract. I expect you do that carefully every single time as a basic part of your job. The fact that you caught that they're double dipping is good, I saw it too."

"So why didn't you say anything," I asked.

My boss, who was Japanese, said "People think that we Japanese don't like to show emotion, but they miss the point. It's not a question of what we show. The point is that if you let yourself become emotional in a meeting, you lose control over yourself, and you lose the advantage of calm reflection. I was every bit as angry as you that they tried to abuse our relationship. But instead of pounding my chest and slapping them around, I wanted to make absolutely sure they knew what they were doing, and then see if there was any chance I could trust them if we had adequate controls. Maybe it was a stupid mistake. Maybe it wasn't, but they'd sincerely apologize and we could build back trust. But we won't know, because you went off on them."

For a brief moment I was angry again, this time at my boss. But he was such a great executive, and I knew he wanted me to succeed, so I sat back and realized that he was right.

Emotions are like pajamas. They're wonderful at home, but not so good in the office.