Composure and Confidence

Composure and confidence.

As I have already written, I spent this weekend at the annual “я-ИТ-ы” conference, which included a series of managerial duels. I had already taken part in two of them, but both were online.

Experienced players had told me that competing in person was a completely different level. I assumed it was because you find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings, with people all around judging you and an opponent sitting across from you. But I had no idea just how much harder it would be.

In my duel, the draw went my way: I was allowed to assign the roles in the first round. The scenario involved a successful project whose manager had not received all the benefits he was due, so naturally I chose to play the manager and gave my opponent the role of his boss. My strategy was to use the project’s success to demand everything I possibly could.

Imagine my surprise when, in the very first seconds, my opponent announced that the project had begun to decline and was being shut down. My second objected to this new premise, but after some thought the referee overruled him, pointing out that a negative trend now did not contradict the project’s success in the past.

I was caught in a vice: a weak position as the subordinate, a project being shut down and no prepared moves for a scenario like this. I had to find a way out of the dead end :(

I began carefully bargaining for one concession after another. Whenever I found something my opponent was prepared to grant, I immediately dug in and secured the agreement. From each newly won position, I went on probing for specific weaknesses in his defence, methodically pushing further and further.

The four minutes of the first round seemed endless. Before the second round, my opponent’s second—the highly experienced Mikhail Zaborov—called a time-out. My second and I caught our breath and reassured ourselves that everything would be fine now: the roles would change, and we had an enormous arsenal ready for that.

Imagine our surprise when my opponent decided to continue with the same roles and the same premise.

I had run out of prepared tricks long before. They had apparently come up with something else during the time-out, and we could not call one during the other side’s turn—everything was against me. I had no choice but to do exactly what I was supposed to do: project an air of composure and confidence while methodically probing for weaknesses in my opponent’s arguments. Believe me, four minutes is a ve-e-ery long time!

In the end, I won by a single vote.

I was as exhausted as if I had spent the day unloading freight wagons. And only eight minutes had passed…

Several people came up to me after the duel and said that my composure and confidence had been impressive. Thank you for the kind words!!!