cian in fooling his audience, so it is your chief tool in fooling your emotional
brain back into a state of calm.
We all should have a “designated driver”—a mechanism for calming
down—when we are under the influence of an adrenal surge. How do we
bring ourselves back to a state of calm? How long does it typically take? An
hour? A day? We must discover this mechanism for ourselves and have a
plan rehearsed, or we will end up driving off the road in some relationship
that matters to us. As a side note, it is worth noting that a police officer
friend informed me that the most dangerous drivers on the road are not
the drunken ones but the angry ones. So, if your mechanism for cooling
down is to take a drive, it is advisable to find an alternative. There are prob-
ably better ways to cool off than getting behind the wheel of a two-ton ma-
chine capable of going over 100 miles per hour.
Rehearse your de-escalation plan by filling out the Chill Chart in Figure
9.1.
I believe in preparing and rehearsing responses for challenging emo-
tional situations for the simple reason that it is very difficult to do the ra-
tional thing in the heat of the moment. As our systems heat up, our logic
can deteriorate quickly into a tit-for-tat mentality.
CULPABILITY CONTAGION
The other day, at a business meeting, I asked an associate about a mat-
ter that I thought I had asked her to resolve for us. She responded by say-
ing, “No, you didn’t!” and began telling me the facts as she saw them. Others
were watching our conversation and waiting for what they thought would
be the inevitable argument over who was supposed to do what.
I thought about her version of the story and realized that she was cor-
rect, so I said, “I’m sorry, I was wrong.”
One observer in the office asked, “What did you just say?”
“I was wrong,” I answered.
“Excuse my shock,” she said, “but I don’t hear too many people say
those words.”
“Well,” I assured her, “I’ve had plenty of opportunity to practice, hav-
ing been wrong so many times.”
Why are the words, “I was wrong,” so hard to speak? Are we afraid this
will be news to anyone? The more easily we admit our wrongs, the quicker
we will be at fixing the situation. The best way to make things right is to be
at ease admitting, “I was wrong.”
I have noted that anger commonly builds in a predicament where the
blame game is being played. I don’t know too many people who actually
80 SELLING WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE