We’ve all had them. Emails land from powerful people, criticising either us or what we’re doing, what we’re proposing.
When those emails land, there will always be an emotional first reaction. Maybe frustration, annoyance, embarrassment, or even anger. We take them personally because, well, they feel personal – even though in reality, they’re probably not.
So the first thing that I suggest you do is to pause, reflect on:
- What is going on?
- Why it might be happening?
- What could be in the mind of the individual who sent it?
Then determine the most appropriate response.
It may take a day or two to calm down and respond in a different way than your emotions might urge you to do initially. In that time, a great deal can change, and you can change.
Depending on the nature of the email, your first response might be to run away and hide. To stick your head in the sand and try to pretend that it’s not happening. Maybe to give up and walk away. If that’s what the powerful people think of what you’re trying to do, clearly you are wasting your time. That’s option one.
Option two, and this is unfortunately quite common, is to respond in a defensive mode, to actually attack back. It is easy to justify this sort of reaction, particularly when in your mind, they’re totally misinformed, ignorant, maybe even incompetent. How dare they get in the way of progress, of innovation, of what good you are trying to do? So we fight fire with fire all too often.
But there is a third way, and that’s the constructive way. See this as an opportunity because in reality, what this individual has done is they’ve shared a little bit of power with you. They have taken the time and the trouble to respond to you, so use this as a way to empower yourself, to fill yourself with confidence.
Clearly there is something that you are doing that is attracting their attention. It is making a difference in their world and okay, they’re not happy about it, but this gives you an opportunity to step into the relationship in a wholly different way.
Perhaps in this way, you might respond with genuine curiosity, concern that you’ve upset them, that you’ve done something that wasn’t quite right, followed quickly with a open desire to understand their position, to learn more about what is going on.
I have seen people many times use these initially shocks coming into their inbox as the launchpad to dramatically transform the relationship they have with that particular stakeholder and they have got some amazing results.
So I would urge you to deal with the emotional impact when these arrive and as quickly as you can, turn it to a constructive response that you can use to empower yourself and transform, improve and develop the relationship with that stakeholder.
The Gautrey Influence Blog
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