The Difficult Email
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The email from Halden was short, formal and unmistakably cold, which made its message all the more worrying.
It turned out that, a few days earlier, someone on the team had sent Halden a containing several serious errors.
The figures had been wrong, the deadlines had been , and the tone had come across as careless.
"I should have checked it myself," Priya said quietly. "If I had reviewed the document, this would never have happened."
Kenji resisted the urge to assign , knowing that it would achieve nothing at this stage.
"What matters now is how we respond," he said. "Let's focus on repairing the relationship rather than on whose fault it was."
He sat down to draft a reply, aware that a single clumsy sentence could cost them the account.
He began by acknowledging the mistake directly, since he knew that excuses would only make things worse.
"I'm writing to apologise for the errors in the document you received," he typed, keeping his tone but composed.
Rather than defending the team, he took full responsibility on their behalf.
"We should have reviewed the figures more carefully, and I completely understand your frustration," he continued.
He was careful to the more difficult points with phrases such as "I'm afraid" and "it seems that".
"It appears that there may have been a about the timeline, which we would very much like to clarify," he wrote.
Where a blunt statement might have sounded , a gentler construction kept the door open.
"If it were possible, we would welcome the chance to talk this through in person," he added near the end.
Before sending it, he asked Sofia to read the draft, valuing a second pair of eyes on such a message.
"It's firm but polite," she said approvingly. "You've apologised without sounding weak, which isn't easy."
Kenji made a few final adjustments, replacing "you made it clear" with the softer "as you kindly pointed out".
He knew that in business, how something was said often mattered as much as what was said.
After a last careful read, he took a breath and clicked send, half expecting the worst.
For the rest of the afternoon, the team worked in an uneasy silence, waiting for a reply that might not come.
Marco tried to lighten the mood, though even his usual jokes fell rather flat.
Then, just before six o'clock, a new message appeared in Kenji's inbox, marked with Halden's logo.
"They've replied," he announced, and every head in the room turned towards him at once.
The tone of the message was noticeably warmer, and it ended with a line he had dared to hope for.
"We appreciate your honesty," it read. "Perhaps we could meet next week to discuss how we might move forward."