Performing Under Duress

Good morning, everybody, Dennis Engelbrecht, with The Family Business Institute Digging Deeper.

We talked a few weeks ago about the essence of competition. And today I want to talk a little bit about performing under
duress. Which as part of the essence of competition and duress happens to us at different times, and some of us excel
and some of us do not. But to be a great leader, I think you need to be able to excel under duress.

One aspect of this performing under duress is keeping your head. And whether it's you're in a presentation and something
gets derailed, your IT doesn't work, or they come up with a new question that you didn't expect, or one of your team
members is fumbling with something. What do you do at that point? I was recently reading about one of the crane
collapses in New York City. And certainly, that's a major crisis that's facing one of our members right now. And thinking
back in time, I remember when we had a youth killed on a job site by a piece of equipment. And that again, that's kind of
a crisis that might throw you into duress.

And certainly, on the job site, whether it's between owner and GC or GC and trade contractors, sometimes the heat goes
up because there are disagreements and things like that. And those are all sort of examples of how you might get under
duress in construction. And then how do you respond?

I recently encountered a quote from Ziad Abdelnour who offered a good set of principles to follow. He said, "Don't promise
when you're happy, don't reply when you're mad and don't decide when you're sad." I thought, "Well, that's kind of
interesting." And I thought thinking about, "Well, why wouldn't you promise when you're happy?" Well, sometimes maybe
that's when you give away the whole ship or whatever because you think everything's going to be great, and then you
make promises that maybe you even can't keep. Don't reply when you're mad. I think that's kind of an easy one.

Anytime you reply when you're mad, it's likely the reply is not going to be well thought out. It might be insulting, it might
raise the temperature of the situation versus maybe bring the temperature down, might escalate. It might lead to things
that you actually regret. And then don't decide when you're sad, you maybe have to think a little bit deeper about. But
when you're sad, you're probably not confident. You may have some hopelessness going or a lack of energy or a lack of
confidence, and you may come up with solutions that therefore don't reflect the confidence or creativity or energy that
are needed to get the best out of the situation.

So, I thought that was good to remember. As most of you know, I play a lot of tennis. And in a tennis match frequently
there are turns of momentum that go against you. Just yesterday, we were winning five, one in the first set and we ended
up losing seven, five. And then we were down four, one in the second set and ended up winning that set. So big changes
in momentum. You're under duress, you're about to lose, and then all of a sudden, what changes and how do you change
it?

I think first you have to look at what causes those changes in momentum. And I think as humans, we have tendency at
times to not be our best. Maybe we lose energy, or we lose confidence. And it's also possible that our opponent has
adjusted their strategy. They're doing something different, and we haven't quite picked up on it. And if you fail to react to
that, the momentum of a situation might just carry its way through to a losing end.

So, any situation that you're under duress suggests you follow some of the following tips. First, it's incumbent upon you
to keep your head in these difficult situations. If you don't keep your head, you get angry, you get all emotional things are
likely to stay sideways, and you're unlikely to come up with a better solutions. Instead, what you need to be doing is
analyzing the situation and analyzing that. Find out what has changed or what can you change going forward. If you can
create a change or come up with a strategy or an energy that changes things, you very likely can change the outcomes to
the better.

Of course, in any case, a solution has to be viable. You can sort of have the pie in the sky solutions and those might not
get you there and might not be accepted and might not get you out of that duress situation. So, they've got to be viable
solutions. Things that are within your capabilities. Always a good idea to slow down. What's interesting, I think if you look
at a lot of sports, a lot of times in stress situations, people actually speed up. And you'll see that in arguments of course,
where people very quickly react off of the other person, and that's all negative. It's very important to slow down, take
your time, allow time for thoughts.

If you're in an argument, maybe take a full 10 seconds to respond to something. You might even... So, you're just not
sitting there in total silence might even ask, "Well, give me a moment to think about that." And then truly do think about
that before you respond. And you're likely to come up with a better response under that situation of duress.

Always use empathy. Always seek to understand before being understood. So use your empathy to try to understand the
other side when you're in a duress situation or in an argument or that kind of thing. And then after easing tensions, that's
the best time really to go back into a win-win situation. Try to partner your way to a solution with whatever's causing the
duress or whoever the argument or something like that is with. So, performing under duress, certainly one of the keys to
winning in life and in business.

Dennis Engelbrecht, Digging Deeper.