How things quickly can escalate

What was supposed to be a more of a meet-and-greet meeting between three companies had quickly escalated to something very different between two of the parties where the tone now was getting increasingly aggressive.

So how did we end up here?

The intention of the meeting was to kick off a larger project with all the key people attending this meeting to get to know each other and discuss the general plans going forward. There was the supplier (large international company), us as the buying party and the end client. One of the end client representatives started some small talks about how busy the market was currently which led to a fairly innocent question about how the capacity was like for the supplier.

The supplier, who quite clearly had been in other meetings where lack of capacity had been the topic, fired on all cylinders immediately and went on full defensive mode. The end client, noticeably surprised about this kind of response to a simple question, did not appreciate that kind of tone and it went all downhill from there.

So what is the key take away here? We all come from different backgrounds, have different experiences and interpret words differently. The latter is particularly important to remember when communication is done in a non-native language. Instead of getting all worked up on both sides, a simple question from either party could have defused the situation:

Supplier upon receiving the original question: Are you thinking overall for our company or for this project specifically?

End client after first reaction: It seems like I touched upon a sensitive topic, did I say something wrong?

Had any of those questions been raised the misunderstanding would have been easily resolved. So make sure you have the full understanding of the situation, this will help you avoid many unnecessary conflicts.