I just found out that its "National Procrastination Week". Who knew?  I'm wondering who marshalled
support in Congress to get this law passed?   But anyway,  let's take advantage of the attention on
this widespread challenge and discuss strategies to take back the reins on your productivity. There
are many reasons for procrastination, but let's focus on a common one today:  Perfectionism.

How much time has your inner perfectionist been sucking from you lately? Here's how to win the battle:

1)  Get your Inner Perfectionist to have a little 'sit down talk' with your Inner Bill Payer.   Get
everyone on board that in the short term and in the long term:

"Done makes more money than Perfect!"

2)  Disabuse your Inner Perfectionist of the notion that it is omniscient and can read the mind of your prospects, clients, colleagues, and boss.   Rather, explain to it that the best way to do a job that will please others is to put out a first iteration and get feedback on exactly what other people want from your deliverable.  Then turn your deliverable around incorporating their feedback.

3) Make sure your Inner Perfectionist knows the value that you are being paid to provide.   For example, I coached a small business in which the owner had a very high performing entry level analyst who would pull all nighters to get the numbers right to the 9th decimal point.  However, the owner of the firm just wanted a percentage range so he could provide investment estimates to his clients.  The analyst of course would come in trashed with exhaustion the next day - and not able to be at her best for her duties.

If you are being paid to be a detailed oriented perfectionist, then have at it!   If not, you are doing yourself and everyone else a disservice.  Know the value you are being paid to provide and be
perfectionistic at providing that value!

4)  Require your Inner Perfectionist have a clear idea of the outcome you want to create before you start explaining what you want to other people.   Otherwise,  you will create resentment in the people you work with and decrease your ability to get highest quality work from them in the future.

What are the challenges and successes you have had in the battles with your Inner Perfectionist?
Leave them on the blog below

(Note:  Til the end of this National Procrastination Week, I'll also be tweeting  links to my most
popular blogs on procrastination in case you missed them the first time around, get them at
@drsharonmelnick).   If you prefer to hear me talking about tips to move past procrastination via
audio,  go to www.sharonmelnick.com to get fr*ee excerpts of From Procrastination to Productivity:
25 Proven Techniques to Stop Procrastinating)

There is one "master" resolution. Without it all your other resolutions cannot be carried out. The one ability you want to resolve to strengthen is Self Trust.

Self-trust is relying upon your inner resources (i.e. emotional, mental, physical, and  spiritual) to achieve desired success and fulfillment.   It enables you to stay steady and expand what you CAN control in this fast-changing world, rather than try in futility to change market conditions or other people.

Self trust is about believing in yourself, that your efforts are worthwhile and will help you progress towards the happiness and results you seek.

Self trust is about your ability to manage yourself, so that when it comes time to do the behavior you've said is healthy or constructive for you, you can get yourself to do it.

Self trust is about viewing yourself as worth treating well, that you are deserving of having the results you are pursuing. This comes from seeing yourself as others see you, not through filters of self judgment.

You judge yourself because you think you will only be loveable to others or secure in your career if you live up to an ideal of perfection. Therefore you always compare yourself to this ideal, setting yourself up to fall short and beat yourself up.

Everyone, no matter who you are, has felt crunched in the past year or so. Some of us are feeling overwhelmed by the stresses; others of us are feeling resilient, knowing we will land on our feet no matter what. Resilient people are energized and take action everyday to create opportunities and keep their relationships strong. Self trust is a learned skill and key factor that determines how you will navigate through turbulent times.

How do you rate yourself on a 1-10 scale of Self Trust? What is your Resolution for how Self Trusting you want to be in 2010 and the upcoming decade?

1) Build self trust by spending time to review your year/your decade and making peace with it in yourself. Here are some questions you can use to guide your review:

• What are the trends?
• In what ways are you proud of how you have grown, and contributed?
• What are the behaviors and attitudes that continue to give you justification to beat yourself up?
• What pledge do you make to yourself to change these behaviors? Why will your efforts  to change this behavior be different this time? What will  happen if you don't make these self corrections? What will  be possible for you if you do? What accountability will you  build in?
• Where can you accept yourself more and find workarounds for the things that are challenging for you?
• Where can you accept the people you are close to even more, so that you no longer are disappointed and angered by the behaviors they repeat?

2) Check out this video I made (its old, we'll all laugh at how different I look now!) It gives you a  tool that will help you quickly build trust in yourself.

Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays probably mean get togethers with your family of origin (or potentially even more loaded:  with those of your spouse!)  While there are many comforts and joy in spending time with your extended family, for some it can mean you have to interact with people who control, frustrate,  criticize, or burden you.  

There are so many other stresses you are likely facing this year so use the following tips to make your family interactions go smoothly so you can take ‘family conflict’ off your list.

1)      Be impeccable for your 50%
You will be very tempted to focus on how other people are doing things wrong and how frustrated you are at how they are doing things.  As long as you focus on what they are doing, you will continue to feel stressed by your lack of control. 

Here’s your new mantra:  Be impeccable for your 50%.  This means, focus on your part of the interaction.  Articulate the qualities and attributes of who you want to be as a person and family member and put your time, energy, and attention into making sure you are acting like that person (no matter what others are doing).   I’m not advising this to give others with bad behavior a free pass – rather I say it because it empowers you to control the most that you can control in the situation and gives you a leg up on influencing others to get what you want. 

Here are some tips:

• Review your communication to make sure it is clear and respectful, this will give you a better chance of influencing others.  
• Think through to know exactly what you want from the situation so you can ask for it.
• Take the time to see it from their point of view so you can empathize with what they are feeling,  make them feel understood, and phrase your requests to them in terms that motivate them.   
• Clean up your own backyard and make sure that you can’t be accused of the ‘pot calling the kettle black’ (nor of repeating your patterns).  This way you have more credibility and power when requesting others to act differently.
• Focus effectively on nurturing yourself and initiating meaningful connections that will bring fulfillment in your current life.

As you are impeccable for your 50%, you will break the interaction pattern.  It will give you the best leverage to prompt the other person to change favorably. If they are not capable of responding to the new opportunity between you, then at least you will have the prize of being who YOU want to be (and all the dignity that goes along with it!)

2)      Don’t live in hope
We all wish our difficult family member could just “get it” and behave differently in their own life and towards you.   You are angry with them because you are hoping and expecting that they will be more evolved than they are at this point.   You are hoping that one of these times they will give you the validation you richly deserve but they are likely not capable of.   You are ‘living in hope’.   As long as you are hoping and expecting they will be different, you will continue to act in your same patterns.
 
As soon as you accept that they are “where they are on their journey” (and so are you), you can focus on your 50% and not try to change them.   Remember, even though its painful for you to standby and watch someone you care about not be happy,  you must appreciate part of you wants them to act differently in order for you to feel at ease or comfortable with yourself and your situation. 

 
If your spouse reverts to someone you don’t recognize when they're with their family, it’s not an opportunity for criticism.  Rather,  appreciate that there is still a part of them that is stuck believing it’s the only way they will be loved by the people they're hoping will give them ‘emotional oxygen’.  What you can do is ‘kill them with kindness’ to let them know that they now have new ways of being loved by you.

Good hope is when you take action to further the ideals of your life;  bad hope is when you passively hope that someone else will change so you can continue the path of least resistance in your same patterns.  Instead of focusing on the unrealized harmony within your family, be grateful for the family members who are alive and in a state of reasonable health;  be grateful for all the ways that you and your family members have been resilient to the current challenging times.   Be a heat-seeking missile for creating connections in your current life that will help you feel fulfilled.   If you are going to ‘live in hope’, Live in good hope and not in bad hope!

3) Take charge of your own chill

You may notice yourself starting to get “hot under the collar” in a difficult family interaction.   You will be tempted to react by blaming the other person, replying with irritation, or telling them to ‘calm down’.   Instead of overreacting, try this breathing technique --  called Reverse Breathing:
Breathe in through your mouth and out through your nose.  Open your mouth slightly, so that when you breathe in you feel a cooling sensation over the top of your tongue (that means you are doing it right, you are detoxifying your liver where frustration and anger accumulate).  This technique creates such an energy shift that it will not only calm you down, but it will calm down the people around you who are causing your tension (I have used this technique to stop squabbles in my family’s kitchen as well as to stop fights on the NYC subway!  Go check it out for yourself…)  

For a free excerpt of the Friction Free Relationship program on how not to react in situations, go to www.sharonmelnick.com

Your assistant makes mistakes and has an attitude. You can't get your colleagues to take you seriously and follow your ideas. Your boss uses a tone, changes his mind all the time, or doesn't go to bat for you,

You and your spouse get stuck in communication dead-ends?  You have drama in your dating.  A family member continues to be needy and frustrating.

The best way to keep your relationships supportive of your goals and not distracting or draining is

DON'T REACT!

Reacting is your effort to try to get the person to stop being the way they are.  It lets the other person get you off track from who you want to be and the results you want to create. Reacting makes you lose time and you waste your focus being upset about what they did.

Of course you know you are not supposed to REACT,  but its not always easy!   

What makes it hard to not react is that your brain has evolved to respond in stressful interactions in ways that are unproductive.  It hijacks you to:       

- Personalize:  To respond you have to explain why the person acted the way they did.  You will ask yourself what does the other person's behavior mean about me?   You might "put words in their mouth" and think they are saying you are "not good enough" or your job or client relationship is not secure.  You will worry about how the situation "will affect you".

- Focus on the Problem:  Our nervous system evolved to respond protectively when large predators were running at us.    That's why when someone is annoying, we tend to focus all our attention on getting them to stop acting the way that's making us feel out of control (hint: rather than focusing on what you CAN control so you don't have that panicky feeling of not having control)

- Negative Forecast:   To save energy and respond quickly, your brain will use shortcuts and default to well-worn grooves in your thinking.  You will believe the person is going to act the way they've "always" acted in the past (even if they don't always act that way).   You will believe your worst fear will happen (e.g., homelessness, lose their love, feel forever guilty) and then act as if it already has.    

The factor that causes you to have these unconstructive responses is feeling that things are "out of your control".   The best antidote to not reacting is to control what you CAN control. 

The first thing to do is get the thinking part of your brain back in charge, rather than the emotional part.  One way is through "Reverse Breathing", in which you breathe slowly in through your mouth and out through your nose, experiencing a cooling sensation over your tongue. 

Instead of Personalizing, try to genuinely explain the person's behavior as stemming from their own limitations or from a "benefit-of-the-doubt" explanation of their motivations.  

Instead of Focusing on them as the Problem, see the problem as part of an overall system that happened between the two of you, and focus immediately on generating solutions and ways to prevent it from happening in the future.   

Instead of Negative Forecasting, focus on at least one thing YOU can do on your own (either in the moment or at a later time) to have control over preventing your worst case scenario.  

This is just the tip of the iceberg:  Do you want word for word scripts on how to be poised and confident and NOT REACT in your relationships?  Do you want more breathing techniques to keep you calm when people are 'on edge'?  Do you want to break your relationship patterns and be more respected at work? 

Join this one-time only Friction-Free Relationships program starting next week in NYC so I can coach you through your specific relationship situations in a small group. 

Is there someone in your work life who aggravates you, maybe even on a daily basis? 

Does this person have outbursts? 

Is it a colleague who is uncooperative and its affecting your bottom line? 

Is it your boss not paying attention or does s/he change his or her mind all the time and you have to spend a lot of effort trying to figure out how to engage them? 

Even in good times,  you always have to deal with the ‘personality’ of fellow workers.   And in these difficult times,  it can sometimes ‘bring out the worst’ in people as people perceive they are competing for resources and vying for the attention of bosses who will be making promotion and termination decisions.     

It makes your days chaotic, as you have to constantly deal with interruptions,  moods, and personality styles of other people.  

Politics feels like what other people create, what other people do and how you have to manage them in order to get what you want.  It seems at first glance like what you need to do is ‘change’ the other person.   

But trying to change the other person will contribute to your stress.   The other person is displaying a coping style which they have had for a long time and are defaulting to now under stress.    Trying to change them creates chaos and is generally futile because its beyond your control.  

The person you have the most control over is yourself (even though it sometimes doesn’t feel like you have much control over yourself either!)  The best way to influence someone else to act the way you want them to is to change your 50% input to the interaction.  

For example, if you are dealing with someone who lashes out, they expect that their outburst will make you ‘cow-tow’ to them.  But instead, you can have a response in which you protect yourself from their anger.  You can use “reverse breathing” in which you breathe in long slow deep breathes through your mouth and out through your nose.  This type of breathing will help you stay calm and centered, so you won’t react with anger or hurt. Similarly, you can use a variety of metaphors to imagine a protective shield around you (e.g., a streaming of white light, a breastplate, a wall, etc) so you don’t ‘take on’ their negativity.  You can diffuse their anger by asking them a series of questions that will elicit their main concern. Meanwhile, you are showing empathy by letting them vent. This generally helps the person feel ‘heard’ and gets them to the other side of their outburst.  

When you stay calm and keep a level head, you will be able to steer the conversation towards getting the information or getting the answers you need.  As you stay focused on helping them get their goals they will help you with yours. And just as important, when you leave the interaction with them, you won’t have to go back to your office and do the typical time-wasting ‘detox’ behaviors for a half hour, such as surfing the internet, venting to a colleague, etc 

You want to become aware of how much time you are spending obsessing about situations in which you have to deal with politics so you can free up hours of your time a week.  You want to become aware of how much of your energy is drained trying to figure out how to deal with a colleague who is playing politics so you can stay focused on your own goals.     You want to have strategies for dealing with a colleague who’s not getting you the information or deliverables you need to do your job so you don’t have to take that frustration home with you.      

To significantly reduce the time, energy, and focus you waste on dealing with politics,  join me as Success Television founder Helen Whelan questions me on how you can take your workdays from Chaos to Control on Wednesday October 14th at Noon EST.  Register here>>

_____________________________

Sharon Melnick, Ph.D. is a psychologist informed by 10 years of research at Harvard Medical School whose techniques help talented and successful people "get out of their own way”. She has helped emerging leaders get promoted faster at Deutsche Bank, Oracle Corp, Deloitte Consulting, Pitney Bowes, Visiting Nurses Service NY, FreddieMac; and has helped numerous entrepreneurs have the confidence to grow their business more than 50% in difficult economic times.

She has appeared as an expert for Success Television, Huffington Post, Air America, American Management Assocation, Monster.com, Natural Health, and Ebony Magazine.

To download her free Special Report Blocked!  How to Unlock Yourself from Getting in The Way of Your Own Way of Career Success in Stressful Times, go now to www.sharonmelnick.com.

Salary.com does a survey every year of time wasting in the workplace.    The 2008 report revealed that 75% of employees engage in time wasting behaviors, and half of those surveyed stated that they waste time dealing with office politics. 

The faces of politics are many.   It might take the form of someone holding onto turf by “throwing you under the boss”, a boss who doesn’t “get you” or promote you, or colleagues or bosses who don’t get back to you yet you are held accountable.

Working with other people, or in an organization, inherently puts you in a situation where other people have control over your deliverables, and thus over your future in some way.    There is a lot at stake, and when you don’t feel like you have control over the things that are most important to you (i.e, your salary/raise,  your recognition, your reputation, your free time, etc.)  it can raise significant feelings of frustration, anger, and disappointment.   

I notice that I am spending an increasing amount of time with my executive coaching clients helping them deal with politics as the people around them seem increasingly resistant to change, turf-oriented, undignified in the way they handle layoffs, etc.   In our coaching we map out how my client can keep their job and get promoted by improving relationships with colleagues and bosses, and influencing decision makers to buy into their ideas. 

Here are 2 tips for how to deal with politics so that it doesn’t drain you of essential time and energy:

1)  Your new mantra is:  Be impeccable for your 50%. This is the first and most important tip to focus on in cleaning up your contribution to any ‘politics’ situation.  It's always tempting to point fingers at other people’s bad behavior.  First “clean up your own backyard” and make sure that your communication is respectful, that you are inclusive and seek input, and that you are reaching out and supporting other people.  I’m not suggesting this to encourage altruism (well, that too, but its not the only reason)!  When you are impeccable for your 50%, here are the benefits:  You get to control what you can control.   You have a lot of power when you are in a position to point out the dysfunctions of others without anyone being able to point a finger back at your “bad behavior”.      The more you are impeccable in the way you create relationships, the more people will trust you and ‘have your back”.  When others speak well of your behavior, it is far more powerful than when you seek recognition for yourself.   While others are distracted putting their efforts into short term efforts to “try to look good”, you be the one to put efforts into making lasting results and relationships.

2)  Be clear about what your ultimate goal is – and err on the side of acting for your long term goal instead of how you “feel like reacting” in the moment.  For example, I had a client who clearly asserted that a certain sales incentive program should stay in place when a number of people around her wanted to kill it. The company ended the program and sales tanked.   The brand new president called a meeting and wanted to know why numbers were so low – no one responsible for the decision spoke up. 

You can imagine that my client wanted to say that she defended the program but all that would have accomplished is shaming her colleagues in public.   She knew that the President would dig into the reasons for the drop in numbers and that she would ultimately look good.   You don’t always have to make your point in the moment,  sometimes you can let the situation unfold or seek opportunities to state your case either outside a public meeting, or when the topic is brought up repeatedly over time.  Similarly, you don’t necessarily have to be the one to point out others’ flawed ideas or inefficient work. Sometimes it can be more effective with someone who is ineffective or controlling to ‘give them enough rope, let them hang themselves’!

Stay focused on being innovative and effective in your own position and don’t allow yourself to get caught up in what everybody else is doing and saying. You will be the one to get noticed!

Join us for a free webcast on October 14th on Chaos to Control. Register here.  You can learn the skills and techniques to manage office politics and other time sucks that get in the way of your productivity here. 

_____________________________

Sharon Melnick, Ph.D. is a psychologist informed by 10 years of research at Harvard Medical School whose techniques help talented and successful people "get out of their own way”. She has helped emerging leaders get promoted faster at Deutsche Bank, Oracle Corp, Deloitte Consulting, Pitney Bowes, Visiting Nurses Service NY, FreddieMac; and has helped numerous entrepreneurs have the confidence to grow their business more than 50% in difficult economic times.

She has appeared as an expert for Success Television, Huffington Post, Air America, American Management Assocation, Monster.com, Natural Health, and Ebony Magazine.

To download her free Special Report Blocked!  How to Unlock Yourself from Getting in The Way of Your Own Way of Career Success in Stressful Times, go now to www.sharonmelnick.com.

What happens when you know you have to do something but you just ‘don’t feel like it’ right now?

Its 85° and Sunny. Business might be looking up but you are still up against a lot of resistance. When it comes time to send that email, write that proposal, make those follow up calls, etc. do you ‘feel like’ doing it? If you don’t, you probably won’t.

Procrastination.

I am putting together a program for the American Management Association called Procrastination to Productivity, so I have been delving deeply into the subject and really getting to understand the ‘mindset’ of a procrastinator.

Here’s a little nugget that led me to a big ‘aha’:

If you are a procrastinator, you believe in the following equation: Motivation > Action.

In other words, you think you have to feel motivated in order to take action. You wait until you feel ready. You wait until the pressure is on. And if you don’t feel that way right now, you think you will feel differently and the task will be easier ‘tomorrow’. (Ok , be honest, am I the only one?)

If you are a successful, ‘take action’ kind of person, here is the equation you live your life by: Action > Motivation.

What motivates you is to see results. When you are not taking action and seeing results, you feel lost and unmotivated.

Which kind of person are you?

In my programs and with my clients, I teach an extensive repertoire of how you can change your thinking, your energy, your negative emotional response, etc. all so you can get into a good place in your mind and be ready to get to work. Whereas these techniques are very effective, now I think the ‘moral’ of the story is to take action — even when you don’t necessarily ‘feel like it’. Seeing results will get you to be motivated so you will ‘feel like’ doing more.

Taking action refocuses away from the negative chatter that keeps you unmotivated. It puts you into a different energy state and creates momentum.

There is a ‘debate’ about what kind of ‘action’ to take. ‘Structured procrastination’ is doing tasks that are simpler, of lesser importance (e.g., mow the lawn, administrative work, input database info, etc) than your higher income generating activities (making sales calls, coaching, etc.)

Your answers will come from you knowing yourself honestly: Does starting off with easier activities create a momentum that then enables you to do more substantive work? Or do they serve as a justification to waste more time away from your highest leverage work?

Does breaking the task down into its component parts and just focusing on getting the first one done work for you? Is it important for you to ‘start with the end in mind’ in order to know where to begin or is it better to do a brain dump without needing to know the whole structure (knowing you will go back and edit later).

The next time you ‘don’t feel like’ doing something, notice the self talk you use to justify it. You now know these are self deluding thoughts, and that you don’t have to wait for motivation to take action. Tell yourself that your rationales are quaint but you are now looking to get your motivation from seeing results.

In short, Procrastinators seek relief. Successful professionals in this economy seek results.

Even though I normally I write in detail what you can do to get yourself motivated, today I think 10 years of graduate study is usurped by the Nike commercial: If you want to get motivated, JUST DO IT!

_____________________

Have A Question for Sharon Melnick?

Are you getting in your own way? Do you have challenges you would like Dr. Melnick to personally coach you on? Join her for her monthly Ask Dr. Melnick teleconference.

The calls are held at 9 p.m. on the 2nd Tuesday of each month - -the next one is on Tuesday, August 18 at 9 p.m.  Submit your question at http://sharonmelnick.com.   If you can't make it don't worry,  everyone who signs up will get a link to the recording of the call.

Are you thinking of starting your own company and being your own boss? It's the biggest trend in business today!

I have been working with a number of corporate employees who left the structure of the corporate world and struck out on their own. You leave behind the perks of the position: the administrative support,the title,the regular paycheck,etc.in favor of the freedom to be your own boss, to do things the way YOU think they should be done,to use your creativity. Among those who are successfully making this transition and excited in their new business one thing is clear:  Confidence and Self Trust are the cornerstones of their success.  

When you (or someone you know) think about starting out on your own, is one of your first thoughts, "But what if I fail"?   (If so, you are in good company. A lot of people have that thought!) For example, before he came to work with me Luke had been laid off from a Fortune 500 company and spent many weeks exploring his options and going through the roller coaster of hope and disappointment on job interviews.  

He considered starting his own company (actually he has always wanted to do this).   But he kept saying that the financial risk was too great. Upon further examination, his real issue was not the financial risk, per se, but a confidence block.    

When he developed real confidence in himself, he came to trust his own resourcefulness. As he looked at his situation more objectively, he had confidence to believe that he could do something similar to what he had been doing, but do it even better on his own. He even got just a little bit angry, enough to make him prefer to invest in himself than place his destiny in the hands of other people he felt pretty certain did not have his best interest in mind. Within a few weeks an investor gave him $250k to start a mobile games company. (And, let me tell you, that kind of investment made him feel really confident!

All of the great companies, e.g. Google, Intel,HP, etc started off with a business plan that went through many iterations until they found what worked. Your mindset of confidence in yourself and perseverance is much more predictive of your future success than any particular "business plan" or idea.   If you have an idea and have always wanted to start your own business, or grow your current self employment into something bigger, you must have the right mindset.

Here are five tips to shift your thinking from fear to taking action and controlling your own destiny:    

3. Identify the doubt you have about failing and either Accept it or Accomplish whatever it will take to move beyond it.   Try to specifically pinpoint what you think you're lacking to make your next step work. Then, either figure out a way to work around that doubt (e.g., partner with someone who has the skills you need or, decide you don't need the experience you thought you'd need to get started) or else commit to building the skill or trait you will need (like confidence or perseverance).   Make a plan, get a coach, whatever it takes.  (Another new resource you can use is Keith Ferrazzi's new book "Who's Got Your Back" to help you use your closest relationships to achieve what you want).   

4. Network, brainstorm,  and mastermind regularly with other people you respect.  Ask for feedback about your ideas. Be open and receptive to other's input but also develop questions to ask yourself that will help you discern whether their (naysaying or overly optimistic) input is coming from their own worldview and has little bearing on your own possibilities. Consult with a financial advisor who will help you to be objective about the financial numbers.

5. Get honest with yourself. What are the real reasons you want to start your own business?   The reasons that will serve you the best in the long hours ahead are motivations of passion and a genuine desire to solve a specific problem that a lot of people are hungry to resolve.   If you are doing it to "prove" something to someone (or if you go into it worried you will fail to prove something to someone) then you are not following the recipe for success. Cultivate the self knowledge and trust your "gut" instincts.

 
If you live in the NYC area, know this:   NYC wants to provide funding and resources to get new companies started!  You are invited to attend the NYCStartUp on June 24 to hear what is available to you.  You will also find out if entrepreneurship is right for you and how to get started; hear the successes and mistakes of well known business owners (such as the head of Vault.com, Clickable.com, Double Click) and hear from Joy Bauer of the Today Show, Robert Tuchman, etc.  You will also have the opportunity to join the Next Big Idea Contest with VCs and industry experts!.

 

 

As a valued Success Television subscriber you receive a 20% discount, use the special code MUL624. 

_____________________________

Sharon Melnick, Ph.D. is a psychologist/coach who helps talented and successful people “get out of their own way”.  Informed by 10 years of research at  Harvard Medical School and trained in cutting edge stress resilience techniques, she is a leading authority in helping business professionals move to the next level and master the stresses of the new economic climate. To see how Dr. Melnick can help you, go to http://sharonmelnick.com.

"The best way to predict the future...is to create it"   Peter Drucker

You may find that you have to give 'bad' news in these times.  It may be to an employee,  a client,  a contractor, a family member, etc.

If you have a tendency to put it off it is because it makes you feel uncomfortable (another deeper reason you might put it off is because having that difficult conversation activates for you a deeper concern  about it having been your fault).  
If you have been putting it off because you don't know exactly what to say, see below for some universals that will help you frame the conversation.   (And If you have been putting it off because its a way of not feeling bad about yourself, then the idea is to make a plan to learn from your mistakes so you won't have to put yourself in a situation again where you have to procrastinate to distance  yourself from feeling bad about yourself!)

Some guidelines:

1) Say what you mean and mean what you say - Don't be vague and indirect so that they have to try to figure out what you are saying. Be direct and clear.  Say it in your utmost respectful tone.

2) "Match" then Move - Never just try to be pollyanna about it.  Don't try to move in right away with false reassurances or just present the rosy side of the picture - (you think these are intended for the other person but mostly they are intended to help you feel better.)   The person is entitled to have disappointed or angry feelings about the news you are giving them.  The first thing to do is to empathize with what they are feeling ("I can only imagine that this is very frustrating/disappointing for you...") When you accurately reflect their feelings you have more credibility with them,  then they are likely to be open to what you will say next that will try to help them move forward.

3) Contextualize - The recipient of the news will definitely be wondering "why" the events are  unfolding the way they are - Give the reasons why, tell them how this decision was arrived at,  contextualize your news in the the overall big picture, or provide a comparison to what's going on in similar relevant contexts. 

4) What will happen - Be very clear, simple,  and concrete about exactly what will happen next - what you will do, what they can expect to happen,  what they need to do,   what logistical events will need to take place, etc. 

5) Have a forward moving message - Have a message that you will tell  yourself that will enable you to stay motivated.  If you have a message about how and when things will get better then you can offer that. Pay more attention to the future picture you paint for yourself in your mind - Stay focused on it and keep moving towards making it true.