My client – call him Fred – and I talked over his angry moment at work last week. Fred’s own customer in Jerusalem had been particularly rude and unfair. Fred let rip. Within 24 hours, Fred had lost a valued revenue stream, and the payment for that particular job was curtailed severely. Ouch!

Double ouch, considering that Fred had been 90% in the right.

As Fred’s business coach, it was my job to encourage him to recognise a few home truths. However, before continuing, let us be fair. All of us go through those moments. Whether we are talking to bosses or colleagues, suppliers or customers, even just close friends and family, we can sometimes just ‘lose it’.

We discussed initially how Fred should not have been in the position where he had to deal with such customers. We know that is not his strength. Yet given how the ‘dice had been rolled out’, Fred had still missed out on one vital and effective trick.

In the review, we identified that as the customer had been letting rip his vitriol, Fred stood there as his blood boiled over. He did not apply a cooling system. A very simple method to correct that is to encourage the other side to explain themselves further. Just ask a short question: “What do you actually when you said………..”.

The beauty of this tactic is:

• It buys you a few extra seconds to calm down and thus to see through the situation that bit further.
• It also allows the second party to open their mouth yet again, and probably make a mistake.

And here I would add one bonus comment. Over the years, I have come to realise that when I look back at the times I have been angry, usually afterwards I have been forced to admit that I could have done something better beforehand. In fact, I was often becoming angry at myself, but taking it out on others. In Fred’s case, he had not fully clarified a certain phrase in the purchase order.

In other words, a misunderstanding over two words had caused a major commercial disaster for Fred, as well as hours of lost time in clearing up the mess. Such is the power and the waste of anger.