For my work I am a manager over approximately 6 people. I love what I do. I love adding organization to the chaos and being “in the know”. However there are many things about being a manager that I struggle with. One quality that I don’t have is assertiveness. My CEO has told me she wishes I were more assertive. I don’t know if I ever will be.
Every once in awhile I have to have an extremely awkward conversation with one of my team members if they are not performing the way I know they can. I hate doing this and I usually procrastinate doing it until the problem has lingered for far too long. I just want everyone to like me and I know that unrealistic but subconsciously I will try to achieve that anyway.
Today I knew I couldn’t hold off any longer. I practiced several times what I would say to him and then called him in to chat.
Needless to say I was able to say what I had to in a nice way and we were able to talk a bit about it. After we were done I didn’t feel like he hated me nor had any hard feelings toward me.
So I am taking that as success. I may not be the smoothest manager out there, but I can do what has to be done whether I like it or not. That has been the hardest thing about my job. Once I had to fire someone and I was so nervous I had a panic attack right before hand and threw up everything. I think the conversation took about 3 minutes in total. Afterwards I was shaking I felt so horrible. But it had to be done, so I did it.
So even though I really like my coworker as a person, it’s my responsibility to make sure our resources are going to the most qualified people. And even though I disagree with about 80% of everything my CEO says, I really like how she said something to the effect of, “When you don’t say anything about a behavior that is not acceptable, you are ultimately giving them permission.” That employee deserves to know what they can do better in otherwise they will never grow. I know that if I am doing a poor job I would want someone to talk with me about it and give me opportunities to do better before they just decided it wasn’t working out and it was time to let me go.
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