Keeping Your Cool

What’s the craziest business meeting you’ve ever been to?

Think about it. How did you react? Did you step out of the room? Did you lose your cool? What went down?

The craziest meeting I’ve ever been a part of is when one employee got caught stealing, knew we had found out, and brought a 357 Magnum to the meeting we’d arranged to let them go. That was crazy. Keeping cool that time probably saved about five people’s lives including my own.

The second craziest meeting I’ve been a part of is one I had prepared for for months. It seemed like the whole business was riding on this meeting. We presented via PowerPoint with the lights turned out in some old-school room. When the lights went on 15 min later — the 400 pound boss-man to whom we were presenting was fast asleep and started to snore very loudly. We were all livid and kind of lost our cool. Extremely personal remarks were made in anger. Our reaction probably cost us another year of living in limbo as a startup.

I’ve also been a part of meetings in which I’ve seen people demeaned, yelled at and sometimes humiliated. I’m sure you have too.

I once saw the male medical director of a hospital’s surgery department dress-down a female resident right after Grand Rounds to the point where she wept openly in front of a roomful of her colleagues. Being an observer I couldn’t do anything but my instinct was to reach across the table and — — — — (fill in that blank). Luckily I restrained myself that time.

Like everyone else- I’ve also been a part of interactions where immense arrogance and seediness is on display.

When I was a lot younger we were at a meeting with some some fancy, old-school fop of a venture capitalist who acted so arrogantly that me being from Brooklyn I responded very aggressively. He started hyperventilating and had to leave the room. No one had ever spoken to him like that. My colleagues and I may have had a good laugh about it afterwards but in retrospect it was stupid of me. I’m sure I’m essentially banned from that firm almost like being banned from some pub where you’ve misbehaved.

Another time when I was a lot younger a sharp-elbowed, seed VC from Boston cut all the angels out of a New York seed deal- meaning, after the entrepreneurs had said- “yes Dave you are in”, then this guy stepped in and said — “no- I’m taking the whole round- f-the angels”. Next time I saw him trolling for deals around NYC at an event acting like he’s a super nice guy- I called him out in front of a lot of people. He tried to change the subject and then slithered out the back stairs to catch the shuttle back to Logan airport. I probably don’t regret that one too much in all honesty :)

All kidding aside though, I’ve learned over the years that having falling-outs that you can avoid is just dumb. You have to be mature and professional. Did you catch Paige Craig’s recent post about being screwed by AirBnb founders ? I was blown away by how he handled the situation. I’m sure it took a lot of maturity and self-possession.

I tell my students not to lose their cool when things get ugly. I tell them some funny stories and try to save them a nice swath of that learning curve that I’ve been through.

Let me know your thoughts and share some good stories with us of course!

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