How To Deal With Angry People…

Posted by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Apr 14, 2007 in Business, Fun, Inspiration, Personal | 11 comments

A few years ago I was on my way to an important meeting at a large cooperation. We were going to talk about a deal between three companies and if it would have worked out it would have been huge.

I was following someone from one of the companies to their offices in my own car. We pulled up to the intercom and announced our arrival. The intercom seemed broken and I watched as the guy in front of me got out of his car, slightly irritated, to hold his ear to the intercom to hear what was being said. He said some things and then got in his car, the gates opened and he drove in.

Then I pulled up to the intercom and said ‘I’m a guest of the guy in front of me’ and the intercom said, barely audible, ‘Yeah go ahead“. I entered the garage, picked a spot and parked my car.

When we entered the lobby there was a concierge waiting for us. He was clearly pissed off and came right at us. His first words:

“You guys go right back to your cars and park them where I told you to park them or I will tow them away! REMOVE THOSE CARS, RIGHT NOW!!!”

I just smiled and looked at my contact to see how he was going to react. He calmly reached into his pocket for two businesscards and a pen. He handed one businesscard to the concierge and the following conversation took place:

Contact: My name is <his name> and this is my businesscard. What is your name?
Concierge: Eeh, my name is <his name>.
Contact: Hi <his name> and who do you work for?
Concierge: I work for <boss name>…
Contact: I see, and who does <boss name> report to?
Concierge: Eh, well, he reports to <boss boss name>.
Contact: (having written everything done) Ok, thanks. So can you tell me one more time how we can help you?

You can imagine what happened next. The concierge suddenly used a completely different tone and we ended up going to that meeting and leaving our cars where they were.

I complimented my contact later that day with how he handled it and he told me that it was an old trick he learned from one of his managers. People, when angry, often direct their anger and frustration at something random and anonymous. And that anonymous might just be you. You can then turn your anger and frustration towards the anonymous attacker and things will escalate. And it often does.

The trick is taking away the anonymity of the situation. By giving your name and asking the other person name you both suddenly become real people and by asking about their bosses you introduce a chance that there will be actions based on what happens next. In other words: accountability.

Last week I was in a playground where a few teenagers were misbehaving. They were throwing bottles and were generally in an aggressive mood. The easy thing would have been to get angry too and shout at them a bit. It would have made me feel better but it wouldn’t have helped. So I approached one of them and said

“Hey, I know you don’t I? What does you father do?”

The kid looked at me puzzled and told me his father was a painter. Then I asked him what his name was and told him my name. I don’t think he believed me but he now knew my name and I knew his and that was enough to ease things down.

You might even recognize the feeling from the other side. Are you ever angry at other cars doing stupid things in traffic? Imagine next time that the person in that stupid car might be a nice lady trying to get to a hospital in a hurry. Or a client whose contract you might be after. Or that girl you are having a crush on.

Someone (Blog or book? I don’t remember) told me a story about how he was traveling on a subway and a man was sitting there ignoring his kids. They were making a lot of noise and obviously annoying ohter passengers. The man didn’t say anything or and didn’t try  to control his kids. The person telling the story approached the man and asked him if he could restrain his kids. The man replied:

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. We just came from the hospital where their mother died and we are all kind of upset…”

Think about this story the next time you are about to get angry at someone or someone gets angry with you.