Tommy Weir: Always keep a cool head in heated situations

After a successful signing for my latest book, I jumped into my car to leave the mall. As I looked up, a passenger in the car parked in front of me motioned for me to stop. Curious I waited, wondering what the issue was. Then the wife walked up to me and told me I had bumped their car.

I knew this was not true, replaying in my mind how I had pulled into the space a few hours earlier. I remembered creeping forward cautiously to get as close to the car in front without touching it. And, more specifically, I remembered at no point during this manoeuvre did my car sensors go off.

However, in an effort to see what this lady was complaining about, I got out of my car to have a look. While it looked as though the two SUVs were touching, I stuck my hand between them showing her they were close but had not bumped. She politely asked me to wait for her husband to come, so I sat in my SUV and waited, bracing myself for what was sure to be a confrontational meeting.

Then her husband suddenly appeared along with a policeman. This is when my choice of how to respond to the situation arrived. Should I be emotional or rational?

In my mind, the situation was ridiculous and frustrating; our vehicles were not even touching yet he had called out the police. The sight of the uniformed officer increased my emotion, along with the looming dread of facing this confrontation full steam ahead.

I could have let my ego get the better of me and responded emotionally. However, I already knew from the circumstances that the other driver was going to act emotionally. After all, he alerted the police to a non-accident.

So I chose the other approach and decided to behave rationally. I decided it would be better to stay calm and quiet and in the midst of my quietness the facts became clear. The policeman asked me to back my SUV up. As he did this the driver of the other SUV asked me: “Why did you pull into this space so fast and hit my car?”

He continued: “It’s big, didn’t you see it?”

While this made me want to respond emotionally, I still held back and I’m glad I did so. As I backed my SUV up, the policeman looked at the bumpers, pointing out that the dust on both bumpers was not even smudged.

Immediately, the driver of the other SUV switched his story and started apologising to me.

As I drove away, I thought to my myself: “the leadership lesson from this car park interaction is that when someone is hot, do not raise the temperature even hotter”.

As a leader your day is full of emotionally charged moments. You are the only one that can chose how to respond – by either being emotional and watching the situation intensify or being rational and coming to an amicable conclusion.

Just days before the car park incident, I was talking with one of my CEO coaching clients about this leadership principle. He said he often found himself getting into emotionally charged moments with the chairman of his board.

He was passionate about his plans and ideas, and as a result expressed his passion when the board did not agree. The CEO started by presenting his ideas rationally. Then when he was faced with resistance, his rational approach was teamed with emotion, intensifying his delivery.

The problem was he didn’t realise the chairman was equally passionate about his resistance to the plan; actually he was expressing it emotionally. As the CEO became more emotionally driven so did the chairman. And as the chairman allowed his emotion to show more, so did the CEO.

We have all been in settings like this before, where one person fuels the next.

I know it is easier said than done, but your job as a leader is to be the regulator, not the thermometer. You need to predict how people will react ahead of time – will it be emotional or rational? Then you must adjust the temperature to keep it from becoming unbearably hot or cold.

You need to be in complete control of your response to ensure you can achieve the outcome you want without exploding emotionally.

Tommy Weir is a leadership adviser, author of 10 Tips for Leading in the Middle East and other leadership writings and the founder of the Emerging Markets Leadership Center