Holoom

Don’t mind the title. I have not forgotten my English and I’m not on drugs (most of the time.) There is a saying in Spanish that loosely translated goes something like: A man is a slave to his words and master of his silences.

The saying means that whatever you choose to disclose, you must later live with. However it is incomplete. Whoever coined it forgot to mention that you do not only speak with words. Your body also talks.

Awhile back, in my project management years, while negotiating the completion of some requirements for a turbulent project, I noticed the client’s counterpart (a very senior guy who had been CIO of huge financial firms) knew exactly when to push for me to cave, and when to hold back because I wouldn’t budge.

Naturally negotiations went extremely well for them, he tossed a small victory my way once in a while, but I was never in control and we ended up doing a lot of extra work for the remainder of the project.

After doing a victory dance on the meeting table, the guy called me in private and said: “Dude, you wear your emotions in your sleeve”. He went on to explain how he was able to read me like an open book and that it was a sin of youth that I would eventually overcome. I appreciated the fact that he took time to encourage me and explain what had transpired. I understood perfectly, because as it happens it used to be a trait of my personality to have an awfully bad, nearly nonexistent poker face.

A sales guy I used to work with despised doing sales pitches with tech guys. He felt they were overly honest and borderline naïve and jeopardized his craft (i.e. bullshitting the bullshit out of bullshit.)

Sins are context sensitive. While lying is bad, lying in sales is generally accepted as a necessary evil. Tech guys with little or no sales experience are about the purest thing in our craft and often have aversion to lying, especially the youngest ones.

Eventually my sales friend learned to prep them before meetings. Still he could not do anything about their faces. One person in particular was so face-honest that one time a client representative said “You don’t seem to agree with what your friends are saying, care to give your opinion on this?”

My sales buddy opted to never use him again, in spite of him being brilliant. Sales pitches and negotiation instances are places where you want a good poker face and a quiet body.

If you are new to the concept of body language, on the next few meetings you have, be in the lookout for crossed arms, finger tapping, sudden face shifting, restlessness, and any other telltale sign that the other person is harboring an emotion triggered by something that happened in the meeting. You will slowly learn to identify patterns that will help you interpret what your counterpart is feeling.

As a for instance by looking at you right now, I can tell you are bored beyond belief. I will now shut up. Sorry about that.

Shuje

On my next post: A blue pill that makes your pants shrink! In the meantime, please tell me your poke-her face stories by either posting below or writing to shuje@holoom.com