During the wild days of the dot-com boom, I worked in employee wellness and sports marketing for a Silicon Valley software firm named Interwoven. One of my responsibilities was to manage our long-term sponsorship with Lance Armstrong--with whom I had competed on the triathlon circuit back when he was a teenager. The job afforded me the chance to pick up some valuable character-revealing insights from Lance, who demonstrates the compelling attributes of a champion on and off his bike.
Once, I brokered a deal whereby Lance would become the keynote speaker of an awards banquet for exceptional high school students. In return for delivering him at half of his normal six-figure speaking fee, Interwoven would become the title sponsor of this grand event, which was to be held in an arena that seated thousands. Lance's appearance would fulfill an obligation per Interwoven contract and everyone would win. As was customary for every Lance event, Stapleton and I carefully negotiated and scripted the timeline of the 2-hour appearance down to the minute. For example, if the banquet folks initially wanted Lance to mingle at a cocktail reception for 30 minutes, that would be streamlined into a 20-minute structured autograph line at the reception--a much more comfortable endeavor than mixing and making small talk. At last, Stapleton got Lance to sign off, and I presented the client with the final timeline.
Well, the young, ambitious representative of the awards production wanted to engage in a little more give and take. I explained to her that this was the final result of extensive effort, approved by Lance, and extremely unlikely to change. She persisted, rebuffing my explanations about the value of my middleman role, the sensitivity of re-opening a negotiation, and the difference between Lance's time as an active professional athlete and the next choice of keynote speaker; say, someone like Barbara Bush. She requested to speak directly to Stapleton. I politely gave her the phone number (Hey, CSE is in the phone book anyway!) with a final word of caution. Less than 1 hour later I received an email from Stapleton that was five words in length: "Too much hassle, we're out."
When I broke the news to the client, she started tripping through the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and so forth). After all, this is not how the typical "We're paying this guy a lot of money!" game works. You know the drill: Hire someone or buy something, negotiate back and forth in an attempt to take as much time, energy and other resources as possible from them for as little money as possible, and then carry on. As Stapleton has reminded me numerous times, "Lance needs to feel good about something or he won't do it. We need to have good juju with our deals."
In this case, Lance and Stapleton put their money where his mouths were, and walked away from what most would consider a nice annual salary for 2 hours' work, simply because of negative vibes about the initial negotiation. There is no doubt that Stapleton could have asserted his position and left the schedule unchanged, and the client would have carried on. (Whom do you think high-school kids would rather see as a keynote speaker: Lance or Barbara [the eventual headliner]?). However, these types of routine stresses and hassles inhibit our ability to perform at our peak. They drain our energy, compromise our positive attitudes and distract our focus. Lance simply cannot have these hassles in his life, because of the magnitude of his goals and the need to protect his energy and his positive disposition.
We've all been in similar positions and plowed through the bad juju for the sake of getting a job, forestalling guilt over letting someone down, avoiding conflict, making a few extra bucks or other impure motivations. Whether you're an athlete entering a competition while unsure about your fitness level, or signing a business contract despite negative premonitions (blinded by a selfish focus on the potential benefits to you), you frequently end up getting screwed one way or the other.
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