Having the Hard Talk
People are afraid of having talks with their bosses.
The fear of rejection, the fear of not being the best, the fear of the unknown. At work, it is the unknown of where we stand with a boss, where we stand with ourselves, and where we stand with the company we work for.
Often we don’t want to hear what others think of us because we don’t want to hear the real story or perhaps the true story. Many of us are not honest with ourselves. Either we haven’t been listening or looking at the signs, or we don’t take responsibility for our own actions. Instead, we want to blame others for our failures. Owning our story is a huge part of dealing with our fears.
Another issue is that many managers haven’t communicated honestly to employees. Communication is a two-way street. Some bosses do not know how to have conversations with their employees out of the fear of hurting feelings or “rocking the boat”. Many times we as people have to “rock the boat” and/or be honest in order to have a seamless group to get the job done or shall we say have a “well-oiled machine”.
Fear is a basic instinct, but learning how to deal with our fears is a process we have to learn and takes a great deal of strength.
In the workplace, it is important to have a good understanding of our strengths, weaknesses, values, priorities, and how we communicate to help give us the strength to deal with our fears.
Learning how to be honest with yourself is very important. Taking responsibility and the hardest lesson of all is learning how to take and own critical feedback without taking it personally. Knowing and admitting the truth is very important in regard to your career success. The first time a boss gave me feedback was tough and hard to take. I wanted to cry but kept the tears back. I hadn’t really looked at performance in a negative way. I know I made mistakes but was hoping no one else saw them. I also knew I needed to grow and learn, but didn’t want someone else to point it out to me. I guess you would call it pride.
However, I also found myself afraid of rejection. The fear that my boss wouldn’t want me as an employee if I made mistakes. I was lucky during this conversation because my boss was kind and honest. Nicely pointing out what I needed to work on and asking me how I would like to go about fixing the errors of ways.
I remember him saying, “so what can you do to fix this?” I thought “wow” you aren’t going to tell me how to fix this. Do you want me to fix this? I never had that before. I remember thinking how powerful this conversation was because he was allowing me to have a conversation about my weaknesses and errors with him.
Learning how to communicate with others is critical. People have different styles of communication and learning yours is a good start. Then learning to own your style and flex your style towards another person's style helps in those difficult conversations.
Being able to truly get your point across, understand what the other person is saying, and acknowledge your discussion matter helps all of us feel positive and less afraid. However, communication can sometimes not be positive. This is okay as long as we achieve a result. We can then take the result and turn it into a positive.
A no isn’t always a bad thing. We learn from these “nos” and without knowing it, we are evolving.
