Why a High-Stakes Meeting Makes You Worse

Imagine a private chef named Odile who has cooked in other people’s houses for 12 years. A client she cooks for in the city gave her name to his sister, Mrs. Ferreira. Mrs. Ferreira wants a chef for the summer at the family’s house on the coast. The meeting is in the kitchen there, with her husband.

In her own kitchen, Odile can plan a week of menus without writing anything down. In this one, her heart is going fast before anyone has asked her a question. While he makes the coffee, Mr. Ferreira mentions that he cannot eat shellfish. Ten minutes later, Mrs. Ferreira asks what Odile would cook for eight guests on a Friday. Odile hears herself list four menus, quickly, and one of them is built around crab. Mrs. Ferreira pauses, and Odile fills the pause with a fifth.

She drives home knowing that she cooks better than she spoke. The Ferreiras hire a chef who, Mrs. Ferreira tells her brother, “seemed calmer.”

Odile is not a worse cook in that kitchen. Her body decided that the meeting was a danger, and the response that followed took the attention she needed. That attention was holding the shellfish and the menus at the same time, and the shellfish fell out. The racing heart was not a verdict on whether she belonged in that house. It was a mechanism, and knowing how the mechanism works is the first step past it.

Your body treats a judge whose decision you cannot control as a danger

In 2004, Sally Dickerson and Margaret Kemeny reviewed 208 laboratory studies of what makes the body release cortisol. Cortisol is one of the body’s stress hormones. The studies put people through many kinds of task, and the hormone did not rise for all of them. It rose when a person had to perform while other people could judge the performance. It rose when the person could not control the outcome. A task with both together produced the largest rise and the slowest return to normal.

A first meeting with a wealthy client has both. The client can judge your work and has judged many professionals before you. Nothing you do can make the client say yes, because the decision is theirs. The studies were run in laboratories, and the step from a laboratory task to a client’s kitchen is the course’s own.

Here is what that means for Odile. Her heart was going before a question was asked, because the two conditions were in place the moment she walked in. Mrs. Ferreira could judge her, and the summer was Mrs. Ferreira’s to give or keep. Her 12 years of cooking did not change the two conditions, so they did not change the response.

Pressure takes the most from the people with the most skill

In 2005, Sian Beilock and Thomas Carr tested what pressure does to people solving math problems. Working memory is the part of the mind that holds a few items at once while you use them. Some people have more of it than others, and the people with the most are usually the best at the problems.

Under pressure, those people were the ones who got worse. The drop came only on the problems that asked the most of working memory. Pressure, the authors concluded, harms the people most qualified to succeed, because it uses up the working memory they rely on.

Odile’s skill is the kind that holds several items at once. In that kitchen they were eight guests, a Friday, what is in season, and one man who cannot eat shellfish. In her own kitchen she holds all of them without noticing. In the Ferreiras’ kitchen, the pressure took some of that space, and the shellfish was what fell out. Her hands would still have known the knife. What suffered was the part of her work that needs room to think, and that is the part a first meeting tests.

Students who were told the arousal would help scored higher

In 2010, Jeremy Jamieson and three colleagues ran a study with people preparing to take the GRE. The GRE is the entry exam for American graduate schools. All of them sat a practice exam in the laboratory. Some were told beforehand that the body’s arousal improves performance, and the rest were told nothing. Arousal is the researchers’ word for the state Odile was in, with the body ready to act.

The bodies of the people who were told responded more, not less. A test of their saliva showed it. Then they scored higher on the math section than the people who had been told nothing. One to three months later, the students came back with the results of their real exams. The people who had been told that arousal helps had scored higher on math there too.

So the response did not go away, and it did not need to. What changed was what the students believed it meant. That is the first step for Odile and for you. Know that the fast heart is the body getting ready, and treat it that way.

Why taking the signs as a verdict goes wrong

Imagine a tutor named Henrike who is asked to meet a family about their son’s last year before university. The meeting is in the library of the family’s house. In the car outside, her hands are shaking and her stomach turns. She has felt this before. Each time, she took it as proof that she was not the tutor for a house like this one. So she texts the mother that she is unwell and suggests a colleague, Rafael, who would be glad to help. Rafael meets the family, and they hire him for the year.

Henrike’s shaking hands were the same response Odile felt in the kitchen, and they said nothing about her teaching. What she lost was a year of work with one family. The next house like it brings the same hands, because nothing about the two conditions has changed.

So when the signs come, do not take them as a verdict on whether you belong in the house. Say to yourself what they are, and go in.

Knowing why the heart races does not make it stop

Understanding the mechanism can feel like thin comfort. The heart still races in the kitchen, whatever you call it.

Jamieson’s students did not get calmer. Their bodies responded more than the others’, and they scored higher anyway. A calm body is not the aim. The aim is a body whose response you have stopped fighting. Then your attention stays on the client and the menu instead of on the danger. Odile, with the shellfish on paper and her sentence ready, still has a fast heart in that kitchen. She also has the crab off the menu.

How to meet the response before your next meeting

1. Write down what your body did the last time you met a client you wanted. Choose the three or four signs you can feel while they are happening. They might include a fast heart, a dry mouth, faster speech, or the urge to fill a pause.
2. Write one sentence that says what those signs are, and read it before you walk in. For example, a specialist realtor can write, “My heart is going because the Dalgleishes can judge my work and I cannot make them choose me. That is my body getting ready, not a verdict.”
3. Put the facts the meeting depends on down on paper before you go in, so that the pressure cannot take them. For example, a home organizer might write down the two rooms the client named and the day the family leaves town. She adds her price for the job.
4. In the meeting, when the first sign arrives, say your sentence to yourself and finish what you were saying to the client. Do not try to make the sign stop.
5. Afterward, write down which signs came, and whether you took any of them as a verdict. Keep that note with the one from step 1, so that you can see what changes from one meeting to the next.

Next: You will see why a recording of yourself is the only honest witness to the habits this response leaves behind.