Lash out or lead with poise

You know when you have one of those days when every possible curve ball is thrown at you, going at the fastest speeds and you cannot imagine how you are ever going to hit it out of the park? Somehow you do, and somehow you do it with poise. Are you like that, or do you know someone like that? Or, do you wish that is how you handled life?

Poise is attractive. It is sexy. Why? It shows that someone can hold themselves together, keep their calm, and not let the situation affect them. I can give you an example. My husband, that man has poise. He will probably hate me for calling him out for having poise, but call a spade a spade right? Hundreds of times over the past 10+ years I have heard him handle people over the phone. He is direct, polite, does not get flustered or angry, yet firm to get what he deserves. Boy, do I have a lot to learn.

There are a lot of aspects of my life where I feel I carry myself with poise, but for some reason (usually surrounding customer service issues) I can sometimes lose my cool, or my composure. Why is that? What sets me off? Often I feel like a victim, that the company has overcharged us and will not reverse the charge, or the customer service agent is rude, unhelpful, or will not fix something that is truly the company’s responsibility. It is easy to slide into that victim mentality and lash out aggressively in hopes that it will fix the issue. Does it work? Sometimes. I have to say that lashing out has worked and leading with poise has also worked.

Maybe the goal is to work towards more poise, and pulling out the feisty aspects when needed?

2 thoughts on “Lash out or lead with poise

  1. I agree that there are definitely times when poise is in order, and other times when there is no option but to be feisty. I tend to side with as much calm and poise as possible until one of two things occur, (1) a get an acceptable response (read not necessarily *my* way, but a suitable explanation) or (2) I am taken advantage of or duped into taking a stance that is unethical. Then and only then, I set the feisty me loose 😉

    Like

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