💃 How To Manage Tough People-Interactions At Work 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! Friday is nearly here, hang in there!

You ever have a tough interaction with a stakeholder?

Or is the better question - you have any stakeholders you have NOT had a tough interaction with 😜.

In all seriousness 😐️, Salesforce professionals are the conduit between technology and people. So much of your role is working and interacting with people 🤝.

Sometimes people have conflicts 😳.

Today, we discuss a surprisingly simple technique to gain an advantage in a conflict 🙌!

Agenda for today includes

• A Salesforce Professional's Parachute 🪂 

• Daily Principle

• All the Memes

A Salesforce Professional's Parachute 🪂 

Today we will discuss-

✅ A scenario with a stakeholder.

✅ An assessment of “what next?”

✅ A simple technique to reduce friction.

SCENARIO

It’s mid-day, you are cruising along in one of your stakeholder meetings.

You’re walking the stakeholder through the report they’d requested. You show them the satisfied business requirements that they’d provided.

Then you ask if any questions or comments?

The Sales Manager says “I don’t like it. You clearly did not understand what we’d asked for. And this isn’t the first time, either. You’ve gotten these simple requests wrong in the past.”

OOOKKAAAYYY 😡😡.

The Sales Manager continues “I have to go. Sorry if I was abrupt, but I’ve had a bad day and this report was disappointing.”

*click. They’re gone.

WHAT NEXT?

Firstly - ruuuude 😡.

There are so many better ways for that Sales Manager to act.

And you met each business requirement! Why do they hate what you built to their spec?!?!

So. Angry. Right. Now.

Let’s pause here.

Yours is a natural and fine reaction.

Emotions are good and they make us, us.

Emotions also can create behavior that is not our professional intent.

Our professional objectives and intent are to solve problems.

Separating the two things, emotions and professional objectives, is your secret weapon 🚀.

It is important to understand you are not suppressing your emotions. That’s unhealthy and may compound into deeper issues 💯.

One more thing before we get into the technique - it takes time, effort and repetition to get good at this.

You didn’t learn Flows overnight, and you will not master this overnight 🙌.

A SIMPLE TECHNIQUE TO REDUCE FRICTION

When the scenario like the above occurs -

✅ First, take a deep breath 😮‍💨.

✅ Next, acknowledge the emotion. Remember, we are not suppressing it.

✅ Then, identify the emotion - is it Anger 😡? Confusion 😵‍💫? Disappointment 😔?

✅ Finally - Why are you feeling this way? The stakeholder was wrong? They insulted you? They disagreed with a policy that you all are bound to?

The Why will guide you to resolution. Since you’ve already addressed the emotions, then your resolution needs to be purely objective.

If the stakeholder was wrong, can you make the case that they were incorrect, with facts and documentation?

If they insulted you, that’s an HR issue. Just understand that the insult was not personal.

How could it be?

They don’t know you. They don’t know your family. They don’t know the environment you were raised in.

Their insult was misguided, and likely a product of their own personal or professional issues they are experiencing, and then projecting out into the world 🌎.

If there is a company policy, like salespeople can only see the Opportunities they own, then a stakeholder taking that out on you is, again, misguided . Policy battles are easy for you to win as they are documented and enforced by higher-ups ☝️.

So, next time you have a tough interaction at work, try this technique of taking a deep breath, acknowledging, then identifying the emotion, and solving the issue objectively 🙂.

Daily Principle

and now....Your Daily Memes