'Leave your guns at the door'.

• Author: Kristie, James
• Position: KARIN MULLER - Brief article

From Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki. Copyright 2011 by the author. Published by Portfolio/Penguin (www.penguin.com).

WHEN KARIN MULLER, filmmaker and author, was in the Peace Corps from 1987 to 1989, she dug wells and built schools in a village in the Philippines. One night, 17 members of the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, came to her hut to interrogate her. Earlier that day, villagers had warned her that this was going to happen, so she collected two precious commodities: sugar and coffee.

When the NPA arrived, she exclaimed, "Thank God you're here. I've been waiting all day. Please have some coffee. Leave your guns at the door." Her reaction baffled the leader of the group, but he took off his gun and sat down for a cup of coffee. She avoided an interrogation or something worse because, according to Muller, "You can't interrogate someone you're having coffee with."

Muller did not react with anger, indignation, or panic (which is how I would have reacted). Instead, she touched an emotion in the leader of the group and transformed the situation from brute force and intimidation to...