Never let'em see ya think!

Never let’em see you think. I’ll stand by this maxim. It’s one I live by. My job requires that I, at times, must deliver bad news to customers. I’m a cell phone technician and I deal with manufacturers’ defects as well as defective customers. Customer abuse voids our products’ warranty and they don’t like hearing this as you would imagine when they bring their expensive cell phone and it's dripping wet. They demand I replace it with no cost to them. It’s times like this that I must deliver the "bad" news. They typically have a quick rebuttal and excuse which requires a quick and confident reply. Here’s the rub. If I stagger, stutter, or in any way hesitate……my credibility is shot. In the case of my job, I expose myself to a verbal attack and relinquish my “Alpha” status in the eyes of the customer. Basically,…..I expose my jugular. I still have the final word, but I have lost face and I appear dishonest. My body language has betrayed me. Where you look while you think says a lot about what you say and how you arrived at your conclusion. Click here to learn about eye movements and the cognitive process. It’s interesting stuff. You’ll understand my aversion to conversational confrontation after reading this. I'm afraid of being misread. I’m typically a fidgety mess on a good day anyway, so I appear shifty in confrontational situations. That’s why I prefer to get my thinking done in the privacy of my own head behind closed eyelids. And more importantly, behind closed doors. Never let’em see you think!