The Negative Impact of Emotions In Business
It was late morning in my office. The sun beamed through the windows, gently caressing my hand as I pounded on the keyboard.
It was beautiful outside, but my mood wasn't.
I was pissed.
Annoyed.
Frustrated.
A fantastic client of ours was asking me questions, one email after another.
Bing, bing, bing.
At that moment, I knew I screwed up. It's apart of our company culture to create a WOW experience for our clients.
The simple fact that they had to ask me for order status, I fucked up, which led me to get emotional.
I reviewed the status of current projects, and I was missing internal updates.
Orders were delayed, and my team was asking me questions on things they should know how to do.
They were also bringing in other team members who didn't need to be.
I got snippy, but a better approach would be to turn these moments into coaching lessons.
"[name], when you have five minutes, can you please come into my office so we can talk about x. I want to make sure we're on the same page and that you can make the best decisions possible."
Much better.
This didn't happen, therefore led to me delivering bad news about an order.
The client said they'd have to get the material locally which meant, cancel my order.
Under my emotional spell, I barked back that's fine, and we would need to charge a restocking fee.
" I'll need to charge a restocking fee on this as it's a special order, so if you can wait, that would be great. This material is obsolete and very difficult to order."
I felt I screwed up. I did screw up.
In our weekly Sales Tactical Meeting, I brought this up as a lesson for the entire team as I made a poor judgment call.
We talked and a suggestion was brought up, which I executed on.
Touche!
But it was too late.
"Wow… Restocking fee. Really appreciate it. Will need to be more careful onwards. Will wait for it to ship on the given date Nate."
I fucked up. Got emotional. Let my shit slip.
It these moments, you learn what you're genuinely about.
Can you correct it? Can you turn a problem into an opportunity? Can you be 100% honest and genuine?
Which I was…
"No. I'm a dummy. I had to leave the office to breathe. I was getting bad news after bad news and became emotional in my reply to you. I'm sorry about that, and I hope you understand. I became emotional and let it show in my email to you based on other things I was dealing with. Very, very sorry. These units are obsolete. If you decide you can't find them locally, I'll have them here for you. I'll keep this SO open for a couple of weeks just in case."
The client and I had been trying to call each other since late Friday night through Saturday.
He asked me if we could talk. This was after my last email.
As a joke, I said no, you've been ignoring me but then chatted him back that I was kidding, therefore to call me NOW.
We talked, which led to a sweet conversation.
He ended the call and said, Nate, know that I would never ignore you. You're very special to our organization and me.
Mic drop.
Lesson learned.
These are my takeaways from this small moment in time and the lessons I learned:
Emotions cloud the mind. Breathe and stay calm.
Coaching my team is always better than barking at them. See #1.
Email and messages suck and allow you to be more emotional than you would be in person. When there's a problem, have the conversations in person or over the phone.
Always learn from my mistakes.
