Morgan Friedman: Hey everyone, welcome to the latest episode of Client Horror Stories. I’m very excited to have Cordell Robinson with me today. How are you, Cordell?

Cordell Robinson: I’m doing great. How about you?

Morgan Friedman: I’m doing great, and I’m so happy the internet is working. I really enjoyed our get-to-know-you call a few weeks ago, and I’m excited that the time is finally here for our episode. So, I have my coffee with whiskey in hand. Tell us all about your craziest client horror story ever. We’re all ears.

Cordell Robinson: Oh my gosh. I’m not going to go into details so we identify where this was, but I was working on a client site some years ago, and there was a person who was basically in charge of managing compliance for the organization. They were at the top level. They reported to the CIO.

This person was extremely picky about every little thing—when it came to documentation, when it came to how findings were written. Everything had to be a certain style, a certain way. And then trying to close vulnerabilities and findings was an entire strenuous process.

So everyone would always be running around scared of this person. Every time they would send an email or there would be a call where we were discussing systems, everyone would be on pins and needles because they were like, “Oh my God, they’re going to almost kill us or something.”

It was crazy. People were so scared, and I was like, “This is really insane.”

It was a stressful project, to say the least. But I worked through it by trying to figure out, okay, what are the ways to keep this person satisfied?

Morgan Friedman: So, I’m going to pause you for a second before we hear how you kept them satisfied.

What was it that made everyone so scared about this person? Would they scream with a big presence? Did people tell stories about terrible things they did? Explain the fear a bit.

Cordell Robinson: Yeah. People would talk about horror stories of encountering this person, and they would be afraid that they would not get their systems authorized if they pissed this person off.

And I’m like, there’s a separation between personal and professional. Let’s keep that separate.

But they couldn’t do that. They were afraid for their jobs, basically.

Actually, one person did get fired from his job because he stood up to the person, but he did it in an unprofessional manner.

So, I mean, he was justified in standing up to that person, but he should have done it in a more professional manner.

Morgan Friedman: By the way, this is an important detail. I’m excited to dive into this because we’ve done almost a hundred episodes now, and we haven’t had an episode where there’s this scary figure everyone is scared of.

And just based on that detail, it’s a really powerful insight: someone stood up correctly. They were right. “This person is being an ass and difficult, and you need to stand up.”

But sometimes when people fight the good fight, they fight it in the wrong way.

I’ve seen it so many times where people fight the good fight, but they exaggerate the case and make things up. I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no. If you’re serious and professional about it, you’ll win.”

But because they’re all over the place and they’re unprofessional and they’re fighting, they ultimately lose—even if they’re justified.

Cordell Robinson: Exactly. Because what happens is they let their emotions and personal feelings get involved.

And that’s the problem. You can’t do that in business. You have to get rid of your personal emotions. It’s just the fact of what it is. State what it is in a professional manner.

You can’t call people out by name and say things like that. You have to keep it professional.

Morgan Friedman: I love your plan. And by the way, this hasn’t come up in an episode before, so I’m so happy it’s coming out now: a large part of being a professional is that you’re being paid to keep your emotions under control.

It’s a key unwritten part of the job. No matter how stressful or how bad things get, you need to be cool, calm, focused—focused on solving the problem.

And it’s hard because we’re just human.

Cordell Robinson: Yeah. It’s super hard because emotions are flying around. And if everybody around you is full of emotion, then you’re like, “How do I navigate this? This is a lot.”

So it was crazy and interesting. I kind of laid low under the radar, but I would voice my opinion in a manner where I would pay attention. I would step back, take a breath, and then come up with my responses in a professional manner because I’m like, “I don’t want to lose my job, but also I need to call it out.”

Morgan Friedman: This is such good advice. I’m happy we’re discussing this because it’s really, really hard not to react in the moment.

Someone’s telling lies, they’re insulting you, they’re being cruel. There’s this human instinct like, “No, no, no, no, no, no.”

But in the corporate world, that is a losing strategy.

Instead, you want to control yourself, go get a drink, take a break, end the meeting, and then figure out, “Okay, okay, what is the best way to expose this and fight this when you’re calm and collected?”

Sometimes knee-jerk reactions are always a big mistake in corporate.

Cordell Robinson: Yeah, I love the phrase “knee-jerk reactions are always a big mistake in corporate.”

Morgan Friedman: Love it.

Okay, so now this guy has this interesting reputation. People are scared of him, but also when they try to stand up, people stand up in these not-ideal, unprofessional ways, and they don’t win.

Okay. Now I understand the situation. So what happened with you and this guy?

Cordell Robinson: With me, we did have one contentious conversation, and I think it was one of the few times in my professional career that I had to really keep my mouth shut and just take it in, and come up with my response—a delayed response later—to make sure that I was accurate and that, at the end of the day, I wasn’t going to lose my job over saying, “Hey, calling some things out.”

Morgan Friedman: You threw out a point in passing that is great. You said, “I had to take my time to make sure I was accurate.”

That’s a really good point because I think a lesson that people never learn—or learn too late—in corporate America is the importance of being accurate.

For a few reasons, because the way these political situations often play out, in my experience, is if you’re criticizing someone, even if you’re right and justified, if you’re wrong on the smallest little thing, then the other side is going to find that minor detail.

Even if it’s irrelevant, they’re going to say, “No, no, no. Look, he’s completely wrong,” and use that to discredit you.

Cordell Robinson: Exactly. And that’s what this person would do all the time to people. And I just thought it was insane.

I’m like, it is not that serious for you to be treating people this way. The way that they would talk to people was unhinged—just belittling people and saying outrageous things.

Actually, everybody just took it, and I was like, “This is insane. I am not going to sit here on this phone and have this person talk to me sideways.”

No. We’ve got to get to that. Let’s have an adult conversation and hash this out. Let’s come up with solutions.

This person loved to just always find fault and beat up on people: “Ah, this is wrong, and this is wrong, and this is wrong.”

And I’m like, okay, you have to understand that nothing is perfect. People aren’t perfect. Things aren’t going to be perfect.

There are guidelines and things out there. We’re following guidelines and rules. They get changed and all those things. Things happen, right? Have some type of understanding.

But there was no type of understanding.

So I was like, “Okay, that’s fine. What I’m going to do is, whatever our interaction is going to be, it’s going to be strictly what it is. And if you have an issue with it, let’s discuss just the issue with it, and that’s it.”

When you go off the rails and begin to insult and things like that, then I’m like, “Pause. Let’s not go into insults because it’s unnecessary for us to do that in this setting. Let’s talk about the solution.”

Morgan Friedman: So, okay. You’re dealing with this guy who would just go off the rails, insult and humiliate people needlessly.

You decided, “Okay, I’m now going to manage him and control him so that we stay on the topic and nothing else.”

I’m sure after you decided this, he still tried to insult and go off the rails. Were you able to successfully control him and keep him on track?

Cordell Robinson: Yes. Every single time the insults and things would come out, I would pause and I would be like, “You know, I don’t think that is relevant to the conversation that we’re having right now.”

“The conversation that we’re having right now is” whatever that topic was.

So, “Let’s continue this conversation so that we can come to a resolve on some solutions so that this mission is successful.”

And so we go on talking, and then insults again. And I’m like, “Okay, let’s get back to getting this done instead of spending our wheels and our time focusing on, ‘Well, this is bad, and this, and all these things,’ when you don’t really understand what’s really going on here.”

You’re located in one part of the country and we’re located in another part, so we’re not even in the same office. You don’t even know what’s really going on. You just know via emails and phone calls.

So you can’t dictate a lot from that, right? You’re not sitting there day to day.

So let’s chill and figure out a way for the solution, because extending that energy is too much.

Morgan Friedman: By the way, I want to make another comment on what you said about you being in different parts of the country.

I’ve often found that there are a shockingly huge amount of people who, in person, are really nice and sweet, but as soon as it’s all online—like you’re just a face on a screen, words behind a keyboard—their inner “come” comes out.

Cordell Robinson: Yes, it does. It does.

And that’s so crazy because I can kind of tell you another story on how I kind of flipped the script or built a relationship.

I was working with a team out in California. Great, amazing team. And when I first met them, it was virtually.

There was a lot of contention and a lot of tension on the calls, and I’m like, “This is crazy.”

So I said, “You know what? I’m going to go out there and meet them.”

I booked a flight. I flew out there for two weeks, sat with them in their office for two weeks, worked with them, got to know them as people, as humans.

Beyond work, just getting to know them as humans.

And so then after that, once I went back home, we had our calls, and everything was nice and smooth because we had built that in-person relationship.

So a lot of times you have to meet the person in person, face to face, to really kind of build that relationship—especially if they have a chip on their shoulder or there’s whatever they’re going through.

Because sometimes if people are going through some things and they’re just angry, they’re lashing out.

But once you meet them in person, they get to know you as a person, then they’re not going to put that energy off on you.

But if they don’t know you, they’re probably going to do that.

Morgan Friedman: I love the story within the story. And I’ve definitely found the same in my career: for big projects, big clients, when I’ve never met them, it’s worth the cost of a plane ticket.

Even just a few hours together in person, you get people at such a deep level. Not just will you get them—they’ll get you. So it makes it so much easier to work with them virtually thereafter.

Cordell Robinson: Yep. So true.

Morgan Friedman: And by the way, there’s a funny footnote here.

I just recorded a Client Horror Stories episode about a week ago. It’s not yet live, but it’ll go live shortly before your episode, where someone had the exact opposite story.

They were working with someone—or a team—and it was the nicest, greatest people online. Then she flew to their headquarters after about five years of working with them, and in person they were complete horrible, terrible people.

The opposite of being online.

And I think even though these stories seem like they’re opposites, they both have a common denominator.

The common denominator is that, for better or for worse, people are really different online than in real life.

Cordell Robinson: So crazy, but it’s true. We experience it all the time.

I always like the memes about trolls online—how it’s like normal, humble people, and then they get online and they hate the whole universe.

There’s a corporate analog to that as well. Virtual working like this, because everyone, better or worse, is so different online than in real life, is really a test and training of our own empathy.

How can we understand, know, feel, and work with these people who are so different that I’ll never know the real story behind them?

Morgan Friedman: And I mean, that’s, I think, a big thing with client-customer relationships: building that rapport so that in person and virtually, it’s like building that so that you don’t have these horror stories that we have, right?

So you have to build those relationships and talk to people as people.

I think from different generations, there are different types of levels of respect and how people communicate, right?

So that’s one of the things.

And I think if you just come at someone very authentically and very real, it’s not going to be an issue.

And also, be fearless.

I don’t think anybody should be afraid of someone else.

Morgan Friedman: Why be afraid of another human? Like, that’s crazy.

You shouldn’t fear anyone. Live in fear and fear some other person and all that—that’s insane.

Cordell Robinson: I think that you know, there are some people that like to scare people and be the boogeyman and the monster, but sometimes you have to talk to them directly.

Morgan Friedman: I like your advice: be fearless. I think it’s true, and I agree with what you’re saying 100%.

It leads me to wonder—I feel like now I’m fearless, but when I was 21, I was very scared of a lot of things.

So I think an interesting question is: how do we teach or encourage people 20 years younger than us to have that sort of confidence to push back against bad behavior?

Cordell Robinson: So I think we should communicate with them more and collaborate with them more, and become more collaborative as a people.

Because I think what happens is there’s this standard or this culture that’s out there that says, “This is the boss, and you’ve got to be afraid of the boss.”

And it’s like, no, you don’t.

You should respect them, right? Because there’s a difference between fearing somebody and respecting them. They’re two totally different things.

And I feel that if you are trying to get respect out of fear, that’s not real respect.

You should get respect because you are a good leader.

Morgan Friedman: I agree with that. It’s interesting, too, how often leaders, CEOs, and executives use fear as a pressure tactic to get people to do things.

Because for me, in my experience, fear—making people scared—backfires more.

For example, if people are doing what they need to do out of fear, then they’ll never get emotionally engaged. They won’t get excited. They won’t commit to the cause in a deep way.

And thus they’ll do much weaker and worse work.

Cordell Robinson: Yep. That’s so true.

Morgan Friedman: I think, just brainstorming on it, even though fear is such a bad strategy to get people to do things, I feel like managers and executives use it all the time because it’s so easy.

It’s much, much easier to motivate people by fear than to figure out: how do you incentivize them? How do you excite them? How do you make them want to do the work?

Because it is harder to motivate them instead of just leading in fear.

Cordell Robinson: So yes, it is so true.

Morgan Friedman: Great. So now, to finish up with the original story.

You had this difficult guy. You decided every time it got difficult, you would say, “Pause,” you would break it, and you would be like, “Hey, let’s get back on track. Don’t make it personal.”

Did that work? Did he listen to you when you did that?

Cordell Robinson: Yeah, it actually worked.

And so then they were like, “Oh, you’re the whatever-their-name-is whisperer.”

And I’m like, “No. I just wasn’t fearful of that person.”

I’m not a special whisperer. I just wasn’t going to go to work every day and live in fear that I’m going to get cursed out, or I’m going to get this crazy email, or I’m going to get yelled at on a call.

I’m not going to deal with all of that.

I’m going to have a conversation as an adult, head-on, and figure out what is the problem, what is the issue, so that we can get the job done and get the mission done.

Because that’s what it’s about.

It’s not about being an—it’s not about terrorizing people.

Because if you have a bunch of terrorized people, you’re not going to get the work done as efficiently and as fast as if everybody is happy and enjoying what they’re doing.

It’s totally different.

Morgan Friedman: I remember I once read an article by an old software developer named Alan Kay, and he had an insight in the article.

He said, “A change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points.”

I always remember that. Being able to see things from other people’s eyes, viewing problems from wildly different directions, basically makes you much, much, much smarter. Insanely smarter.

And thinking about it now, I think there’s a parallel insight we could make about being fearless.

I would adapt and reframe Alan Kay’s insight and say being fearless gives you 80 IQ points more as well.

Because when you’re just not scared, suddenly you can charge ahead and do all these things that no one else is doing and get magical things done.

Cordell Robinson: Because usually, the people that are the scariest people are not that scary once you get to know them and talk to them.

You just have to break that barrier.

Morgan Friedman: That’s actually a good point as well.

I’ve also seen that there are a lot of people who bark and bark and bark, but where there’s bark, there isn’t much bite.

And in fact, I’ve often found the scariest people can be the quiet people in the corner.

Cordell Robinson: The quiet ones are the ones that will destroy your life and your career.

Morgan Friedman: No, thousand percent. I was going to say the exact same thing.

Because it’s the ones that you never expect. They’re just observing, watching, scheming, and then appearing out of the blue when you don’t expect it.

So actually, I like this more subtle reframing of it.

It’s not just “don’t be scared.” It’s that the people to be scared of aren’t the obvious people you would think—like the angry person screaming and insulting all the time.

He’s actually not the one to be scared of.

It’s the one who you don’t even notice.

It reminds me of this guy I once worked with who would scream and yell at everyone and all the employees in the company.

He would always say, “You’re fired. Get out of here.”

He would just fire everyone every day.

But in real life, no one was ever fired.

Like, a few hours later, every single time—four hours later—it was, “No, no, no, we need you. I didn’t mean it.”

And this would happen on a weekly basis to different people.

So he’s, in my mind, the consummate example of the person screaming and threatening, but where there’s a lot of bark, there’s no bite there all the time.

Cordell Robinson: People are so conditioned to follow the path of fear.

So when someone comes along who’s fearless, then they look at you like you have three heads.

Like, “Oh my gosh, you’re going to talk to them?”

Yeah, I am. Why not?

They’re human. They’re a person. We’re all human beings. We’re all people.

It’s not like, okay, this person has earned this position and this esteem and I respect that. I’m going to respect their position, their accomplishments, and things like that. Of course I’m going to respect that because they worked hard and they earned it.

But I’m not going to allow you to just say crazy things either, or belittle people, or create unnecessary stress when it doesn’t have to be that way.

Let’s just focus on the mission.

I’ve led and managed so many different teams throughout my career. And if you go back and talk to each of the teams that I managed over the years, they would probably all say the same thing: I never led in fear. I led in reality.

So if there was something wrong, I would bring it to everyone’s attention.

“This is wrong, and we need to fix it. Who has the solutions to fix it?”

Even if I had a solution, I made them come up with solutions because they need to learn and grow.

So I’m like, “Okay, now let’s get to the solutions.”

There was no—I never yelled and all of that.

I mean, there were times I would get annoyed when someone would do something absolutely ridiculous. Like, “Come on. You know, yeah, that’s—come on.”

But I would probably have a sidebar conversation with them. I would never call them out.

I would, on the side, say, “Hey, you know, what’s going on?”

Because sometimes people have things going on personally that affect the quality of their work, and then they need to talk to somebody so that they can shift their focus, compartmentalize, and get their performance back up to par.

You never know what people are going through.

And so, you know, the people with the mentality of “I’m going to scare people and be the boogeyman” is like—why?

I think we’re transitioning into new management and things like that. I think that we’re going into a different style, which is great, of less fear.

I mean, it’s still there. I see it in different organizations where it’s still there.

But in other organizations, it’s more collaborative than fear. It’s more, “Let’s get the mission done” than fear.

But if you mess up, you still get reprimanded, right? Because you messed up. You get reprimanded and whatever consequences—that’s valid, right?

And then you take it because that’s what it is.

But for someone to constantly beat you down and beat you down and beat you down is unnecessary.

Morgan Friedman: I agree with that 100%.

This makes me remember a little detail about my personality and my career, which is that because I’m nice, collaborative, and positive all the time, people misinterpret that as weakness.

So, many times I have employees who are wildly underperforming and doing terribly, and because I’m not the “you do this or you’ll be fired” guy, I’m calm, I’m positive, I work with them, I try to improve.

But then one day I’ll just fire them.

And all the time, they never see it coming because they’re like, “No, you’re so positive.”

And I’m like, “Dude, we’ve been talking about your problems openly and directly and trying to improve them for a long time. Look at all our meeting notes. They haven’t improved.”

I think because people associate the scary guy with the one who will fire them, but not the nice guy in the corner, when you’re the nice guy in the corner and you wield your strength, it often comes as a surprise.

Cordell Robinson: Actually, it’s shocking because it’s unexpected when it comes that way.

Morgan Friedman: Yep. So, totally.

Cordell, this has been such a wonderful episode. I liked your little story, and I also liked that this led to our analysis of leading via fear, in which every episode I try to get at least one new issue or one new topic out that had never come out before.

So, great lessons, great insight, and thank you very much for your time.

Cordell Robinson: Awesome. Thank you for having me. And everyone who’s been watching, we hope you stayed to the end and enjoyed the episode as much as we have recording it.

Morgan Friedman: Until next time.