The Art of Correcting Mistakes
anonymous-100756 10/11 4405
Shenzhen, Summer, 1994.
Bang! I slammed the door in front of my boss, Anjani Kumar Singh, a gem stones dealer from Indian.
He was shocked and embarrassed! So were the customers from Hubei who just purchased a lot of gem tones from us……
I was interpreter, broker and top sales for Singh’s company: Indo Sino Gems.
Due to my great sales performance, I became so haughty and arrogant, that I even challenged my boss and his strategy for sales in China.
“Singh! I think our prices are too high! The reason these customers still bought from us is because of my personal influence on them, my personal charisma on them! And I have worked my tail off to keep that influence. However, if we wanted to have bigger share of China market, we should reduce our price dramatically! Otherwise, we will definitely lose the market.”
“Gowan! We have our reasons to price like that! Just focus on the sales, and we can still make good sales.” Singh tried to convince me.
“No, no, no, you are absolutely wrong! How you can stupidly think like that! Just like in Chinese we said you have only rat’s vision ( 鼠目寸光) ”I started to criticized my boss directly.
We argued back and forth, and finally, I lost my temper and slammed the door in front of the customer who were invited by us to celebration dinner.
The customers were embarrassed.
Singh was embarrassed
I was embarrassed and the whole dinner was embarrassed!
When my temper settled down, I started to regret for my temper, my rude manner and the possibility to lose my job.
We were staying in the Silver Lake Hotel of Shenzhen, and the lake found me drinking beer , eating peanuts and worrying about my future.
When I was a little bit drunk , a man sat down in front of me with same brand of beer Kingway and same brand of peanuts from Sichuan.
It’s good to have a drinking company, so we toasted to each other and started to chat. We chatted about wine, food, weather, girls, history, political, any interesting things you just named it.
We chatted on and on for more than 2 hours with a lot of empty beer bottles around us.
Finally, I stopped drinking before I was totally drunk and cried to the man in front of me:
“Singh! I am sorry for what I did recently! I was too cocky! I shouldn’t treat you like that. You are my boss, you are my buddy, you cooked food for me, you took care of me and it’s you who taught me how to do this business! How can I be that rude to you!”
“It’s OK, buddy!” Singh put his hands on my shoulder.
“No, it’s not OK!” I cried even louder,” look at me! This ass hole! I just embarrassed you in front of our very important customers. Why didn’t you shouted at me, or even beat me. I deserve it! I damnly deserve it!!
Singh hugged me like a big brother, and joked,” Ass hole! Are you a sissy? Let’s go watch a movie and have some fun! ”
The famous strategist Sunzi said: it’s better to win the hearts than destroy the city! ( 攻城为下，攻心为上，不战而屈人之兵，兵法之上者也！--- 孙子兵法)。 Singh may not read about Sunzi, but his practice was just a perfect example of it. In stead of shouting at me like many bosses would do, he cared about me sincerely and won my heart forever. So the art of correcting mistakes are as follows:
Shouting at your staff, you stopped his wrong behaviors for the moment, and most probably, they will do it again when you turn your back.
Respect and caring about your staff, you won their hearts and they will stop the wrong behaviors for you ,even if you are not there.
