You Did Too!

Today I got into a verbal altercation with a 17-year old high school student, on his turf. My company, Company X decided to teach a negotiation simulation at a local high school today to give high school seniors a chance to act out a real-world negotiation over two competing record companies.

I was a coach. At first, I was like, I am just going to "guide" my team, but let them do most of the thinking. I thought I did a fairly good job of that, but the team we were negotiating with was very positional and demanding without providing very good rationale for their arguments. At one point, the other team was arguing that the 20% royalties my team was asking for was OUTRAGEOUS. I merely pointed out that earlier, they had insisted that my record company was inferior to theirs because they had a record deal with three out of the four band members, while we held only 25% of the assets, so a 20% royalty seemed reasonable to me if we were going to allow an album to be produced under their label and with their complete artistic control. "Did not" was followed by "You did too!" Then, in not so nice words the boy told me to butt out and that I wasn't allowed to talk because I was a coach and not a student. Not gonna lie, that stung, but . . .

What the hell was I doing??? I got into a fight with a 17-year old boy! I am so not mature! My team, of course, had my back, but still-I got a little carried away. In the end my team did not reach any agreement with the other team, which was a bummer, but I was still proud of them because they really acted like a team and learned from the experience.

The only thing that makes me feel better about the whole situation was that one of the other coaches told me that tomorrow she will probably have a bruised and sore tongue because she literally had to bite her tongue in order to keep from piping up during her negotiations.

Well, I told her, at least you still have your pride and didn't get told off by a minor.