Saw this first hand as a good technique - it was amazing. Was working in a open plan office of a major corporation and our department was situated right next to the CEOs office. One of my managers had an issue and got angry and said "right, im going to talk to the CEO" and walked up to him. CEO just said something like "Okay, thanks for bringing it to my attention but I have a meeting to go to right now, can we talk about this later". Not only did it completely defuse the anger of the manager but it totally worked and they never followed up. The manager was like head explodes in awe.