What to do when tempers flair

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begeland

In the wake of the racing incident that took Kevin Ward's life and put Tony Stewart on the sidelines indefinitely, the thought of what we do on our projects when tempers flair on either side of the project fence came to mind. Granted, we aren't going to have to put ourselves in danger like Kevin Ward did...it is probably never going to be a wise decision to get out of your race car and walk against oncoming traffic yelling...to me that is almost the same as yelling at a police officer who has his gun drawn already. But in the heat of the moment it is not always easy to control our tempers.

Have you ever had a situation on one of your projects where either you, or someone on your team, or someone on the customer side has lost control of their temper to the point where it was concerning and needed to be addressed before real damage was done? What did you do? How did you react? I've had some heated moments on projects, but never anything out of control (or nearly out of control) but I realize it could and does happen. I would really like to hear of strategies others have used to try to keep these types of situations from becoming project tragedies. Thanks!

Brad Egeland
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