Chances are you will at some time have to deal with difficult situations at work. You may have to discipline a team member, bring up an issue of poor performance or even dismiss one of your team.
Being Fearful of Confrontation is Costing You $$$
When your employee’s behavior makes you feel angry, hurt, or betrayed, you may choose to keep quiet. You may pretend nothing is wrong. You may fear that if you blow up and have an angry confrontation with the perceived wrongdoer, nothing good will ensue . But it this working for you? I’ll wager it’s not. Top leaders become masters of the art of handling difficult conversations.
Fear of Making Things Tens Times Worse
Since you know that the wrong response can cause resentment and bad feeling, you may decide to leave well alone . And this thinking will have the effect of never resolving the problem at all. So many Business Owners I work with have people on their team who have a staggering amount of attitude and an undeserved sense of entitlement. They show little regard for the fact that the business may have challenges to address – so long as they are OK and left alone, they are happy. I call these team members the ‘prima donnas’. They are divas that everyone panders to including the boss! It seems that they have control and they dictate how things will roll whether they have the right so to do.
The best response and the most effective by far is one that involves calm reasoned dialogue (and some courage!).
The trouble is that this is easier to say than to achieve for most of us.
Fear We Don’t Know How to Deal With Difficult Situations
This is because like many things in business we are not trained in how to deal with difficult situations. Unless our previous jobs have required this as a key skill, such as a job in the police force, the chances are we won’t feel equipped in this regard .
Most of us deal with confrontations in the way that we have learnt from our family, friends, work colleagues and bosses . The trouble is that none of these will have been trained either. And so it is no wonder that so many confrontations end up in poor outcomes for both parties and effective leadership is absent.
Study How to Handle Conflict
The good news is that you can learn the skill of handling conflict. There are some excellent books that will get you up to speed in no time. One of my favourites is ‘Radical Candour’ by Kim Scott. Another is ‘3 Signs of A Miserable Job’ by Patrick Lencioni.
Successful people take the time to dream about accomplishing things that they have accomplished before. They are honest with themselves. They invest in their personal development.
In “Team Building Without Time Wasting’, top Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith says that leaders have more work to do these days and fewer staff/team members to help them do it. If they can get each team member to bring their own A game, then as a wise man once said ‘Many hands make light work’. Focused feedback and repeated follow up increases the productivity in a team. In turn this raises the bar in terms of the results that are produced. The exercise described in this guide by Marshall Goldsmith gets team members to figure out how to solve their own problems instead of expecting the boss to do it. This is a proven team building exercise used by CEO’s and top executives in Fortune 500 companies. Owners of SME’s will benefit from emulating what is done by the best of the best leaders in the world.
Generally How Do I Know This?
Like you, I’ve been in the driver seat of a business, and found myself spinning wheels and struggling to manage people. The fear nearly killed me, and I burned out before I decided enough was enough.
Working with business owners as a Business Coach today, it never ceases to amaze me how much pain business owners are willing to endure before facing their fears and making a shift. You can read more about my journey from legal professional, to business owner, to #1 Business Coach here:
