Just before this (at the time long overdue) vacation, I was invited to attend a meeting with a technical sales guy from a supplier. Normally, I must admit, I tend to be somewhat (too) polite with people I meet on a professional basis, which can get in the way of the real goals of a meeting - obtaining information and actions. This time, though, exhausted as I was following the stresses and strains of moving house, and from lack of quality sleep during the hot summer nights, I was on a shorter fuse than normal.
And it felt great. I finally didn’t care about potentially hurting somebody’s feelings with indelicate questions - I just asked, and asked again if I felt I was getting a wishy-washy (salesy) answer. I was liberated to become a grumpy engineer: I stopped filtering myself, tying myself in worrisome knots, and got to the heart of the matter much more quickly than I would have.
So the lesson here for me was that I should try to distill the essence of grumpiness (giving waffle and muddiness of answer short shrift, wanting to get out of meetings as quickly and as effectively as possible), without having to go down the route of exhaustion or really offending my business contacts. Tips, tricks, resources on this would be welcome!
