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: Thursday 7pm
Place: Swish restaurant, Collins St, Melbourne Australia
Players at the dinner: Bankers, lawyers and the client
The scene: A dinner to mark the ASX listing of a proud Aussie company.
Client drunkenly stands to make speech.
Everyone at table thinks he will say something gracious and congratulatory.
Instead, he admonishes the lawyers for some tiny mistakes.
Then has a go at the bankers for low-balling the listing price…
Female lawyer starts to defend herself, and interrupts drunken client
Power play do-over? (if this lawyer could rewind the clock and have her moment again..)
If ever the rule of never arguing with a drunk or a fool ever applied, it’s here. The lawyer should have kept her mouth closed and smiled. A celebration is no place for putting an out-of-line client back in their place. She should have visited him the next day (when he’s hopefully sobered up) and set the record straight, perhaps reminding him that a conversation like what he raised the night before must always happen behind closed doors.
Calm, professional. Never defensive. And very powerful too.
Next week we listen in on a heated conference call