Make Your Weaknesses Your Strengths

Let’s turn that situation around a bit. Let’s say you’re the business associate and you know you get nervous when you’re discussing certain issues. What should you do?

One strategy that would work to your advantage is simply to admit it’s an important issue right up front. The idea is that you’re not going to be able to BS the guy about it—and that shouldn’t be part of your plan anyway, since you never lie. If you say, “Look, I’m a bit nervous talking money, but this is the figure I’ve been given to work with . . .” you’ve taken the focus off your emotions and put it where it belongs, on the money. Your emotion is not contradicting what your verbal content is; on the contrary, it’s reinforcing it.

Of course, if we could always control and know our emotions, we probably wouldn’t have any. But that’s another subject.