Sam was a leader at one of our holding companies.
During due diligence, we profiled Sam as a Red & Blue personality — Driver, dominant who is energized by people and social interactions.
Sam had always displayed an aggressive and argumentative personality. Debating trivial matters brought Sam joy.
When asked to describe Sam in one word, an executive peer once said, "bombastic."
In rare moments when Sam was not animated, they stayed stone-faced. There was no middle ground.
So, when they would argue minute details of marketing spend, get overly worked up in a meeting, or when their ego was on full display, we learned not to worry — it was Sam’s baseline behavior.
New Behavior
What did concern us was when Sam became unusually disengaged and distant.
After years of good work, Sam’s performance dropped tremendously and unexpectedly — almost overnight.
Sam became slow to respond to external partners and internal stakeholders, and their behavior began to hurt the business venture.
The “Why” to the “What”
Years ago, I attended my friend’s continuing education class. My friend, a doctor and highly skilled with people, taught that "there is always a why to the what of peoples' behavior."
A graduate school professor trained in high-stakes negotiation insisted that I profile my opponent before every negotiation.
He explained, “You don't profile to be right, rather you profile because the exercise teaches you to think like your opponent, and it better prepares you for any situation with your opponent.”
By simulating dozens of "what-if" scenarios, you become more trained to think like your counterpart and more likely to recognize non-verbal cues to their behavior. It’s why high-performers like Kobe Bryant don’t get nervous in due-or-die situations; thousands of high-stake scenarios have been simulated and practiced before the moment of performance.
I knew Sam’s "what" — recent behavior was poor. Now, I needed to know Sam’s "why."
The Negotiation
We set up meetings to discuss Sam’s behavior.
In our first conversation, Sam became animated in defending their leadership abilities and stone-faced when we discussed potential consequences for their behavior — true to Sam’s baseline.
Sam was again animated and defensive the following week when we reconvened to work on redirecting their behavior and performance. On their feet, pacing and yelling while defending their credibility and unfazed when we discussed consequences, Sam seemed more like an actor playing a part than a businessperson. Sam was relentless and exhausting.
The meeting ran about 2 hours long because Sam was so talkative and quarrelsome. Having made no progress, we closed the meeting by threatening termination and severance package if things didn’t change in the next 2 weeks.
My teammate made the threat, and, unexpectedly, I saw Sam’s stone-face break ever so slightly.
The corners of Sam’s mouth perked subtly, briefly, but noticeably when they heard “severance package” — a deviation from Sam’s baseline.
I shared my observation with my colleague post-meeting. Why did Sam break behavioral baseline when we talked about termination and severance package?
We decided to watch for Sam’s tell the next time we met.
Two weeks passed and Sam’s behavior had worsened, so we called our final meeting to address their behavior.
During our final meeting, Sam again perked the corner of their lip when we said, “severance package.” Sam then quickly covered their mouth and then started to write notes -- two things Sam never did -- and then stood up and began to yell about how unfairly they had been treated, and their prominent attorney friends who were foaming at the mouth to take us to court — back to Sam’s baseline.
After the meeting, my teammate and I analyzed Sam’s tell.
The “What”
Sam wanted to be terminated. Sam was intentionally underperforming and being evasive. Sam wanted a buyout.
But, “Why?”
We analyzed our previous meetings. We reviewed Sam’s social media activity. We looked for signals and reviewed our original due diligence file on Sam.
We realized that Sam:
Was the only member of their family that hadn’t achieved academic success.
Had exuberant spending habits on cars, clothes and jewelry, but Sam’s home was considerably modest.
Had a strong need to be liked.
Frequently bragged about paying in-full for expensive, extended-family vacations.
Was a tight-wad when it came to their business operation or anything that would cut into profits.
Frequented casinos and resorts.
Then, we figured it out…💡
Sam was broke.
The goal was to get cash fast, so Sam sought a buyout.
This is “why” Sam got excited when hearing “termination” and didn't care when we threatened demotion.
Our Strategy
We developed a strategy with this new information.
01. If Sam threatened a legal fight, we wouldn't take it seriously. Sam couldn’t afford one. Sam was bluffing.
02. We would give Sam one week to name a buyout price -- this bought us time to hypothesize how bad Sam’s personal finances were. It would also delay a buyout by an extra week, putting Sam in a more desperate, weaker position to negotiate.
03. We would dismiss Sam’s buyout price and wait another 4 days to offer a price that they’d have to take -- one that was significantly lower than asking price, but one that Sam’s pride couldn't afford to bypass.
The End Result
As expected, Sam asked for a rich buyout price.
And threatened a legal fight.
We held to our strategy.
And, we bought Sam out at about 11% of ask price 15 days later.
Sam walked away with enough cash to stay above water in the short-term, but not enough to atone for poor personal financial choices as hoped.
Takeaways
It would have been so easy to:
label Sam a jerk once their behavior became strange.
get worked up and match Sam’s behavior.
take offense and play Sam’s combative game.
But profiling Sam led us to tactical empathy and considerable wins for us.
And we only figured out Sam’s motive after multiple rounds of profiling and conversations and observations of baseline behavior.
It pays to profile your opponent.
