The Power Playbook’s Rose Herceg reports from whichever city she finds herself in about the stories she sees in boardrooms, business lunches and dinners across Australia (and sometimes the world).
Time: 10pm
Place: Surry Hills
The scene: A design team has stayed back to work late into the night for a big presentation the following day. People are tired. People are pissed. And people are starting to get mean. One of the key designers is argumentative, precious and petulant. The female boss loses her patience and tells him that her five-year old son has better manners. Her words are so caustic that she makes him cry.
Power play do-over? (If this woman could turn back the clock and have that moment all over again)
No matter how much he deserves it, getting a reputation for making someone cry is not what this lady should be shooting for. There are plenty of ways to show your displeasure without demolishing the other human being. Maybe something like this would have worked better…
“It’s late, you’re tired and you probably want to go home. I know I do. But here’s the thing: you need to stay and I need to stay and we all need to stay until the job is done. So the only thing left to do is to make it as painless and as easy as possible. I say we order a dozen pizzas, a few tubs of ice cream and every piece of junk food under the sun, strap in and get it done the best way we know how”.
Compassionate. Measured. Constructive too.
Next week we observe a very public meltdown…