How to Respond Professionally to a Frustrating Situation at Work
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“My company said they’d promote me — and didn’t.”
Answering a question that came in from a Culture Drop subscriber:
“I was offered a management position and then my company failed to act on it, even with multiple follow-ups to the hiring manager. Is it time to leave the company? It’s been over two and a half months now.
I love this question. It’s juicy and I’m going to try and speak to a couple of different things happening in this scenario.
First of all, don’t make assumptions.
The question asks if it’s time to leave the company. My answer is: maybe, it depends. Yes, that situation is frustrating. But really, what is at play here is a lack of communication. You likely have assumptions about what’s going on behind the scenes.
When anything like this happens where we aren’t being communicated with, humans tend to make assumptions. Thus, the narrative falls in our court and sometimes, we assume the worst.
“They changed their mind,” or “They don’t want me for this job because they don’t like me.” or “Maybe they’re planning on firing me.”
Whatever those assumptions are, they are usually not the truth (or the whole truth, at least). Don’t act on or respond emotionally to something that you don’t know is 100% true.
Avoid the trap of believing the worst narrative you can come up with, acting like that might be true, and then emotionally responding to a worst case scenario.
There’s an obvious lack of communication on behalf of the company that needs to be addressed ASAP. But the reason why I wouldn’t tell this person to outright quit their job or freak out is because other than a lack of communication, they don’t know that the situation is bad.
What if the reason is really good?
What if the company has bigger, better plans for you? What if they’re working on creating a completely new role for you? What if they’ve noticed things you do that lead them to think you might not be ready for a leadership position quite yet, and they want to invest in developing you for the role?
Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by making the assumption that the worst possible scenario is reality. Doing this only makes you more frustrated at the other person, and could cause you to navigate the situation in a way that makes it worse for you by acting on something that isn’t true.
As a leader or a manager, you have to be able to have potentially difficult conversations in a disarming way. Practice this by communicating with the company in an emotionally-neutral manner. My advice is to be curious, and ask for clarity — don’t waste time on making assumptions or spinning a story in your head that might not be true.
How to approach the conversation.
A great lead-in to this sort of conversation that will disarm the other person and encourage honesty is “Any answer is okay, what I want is the truth and some clarity.”
This communicates to the other person that you truly want to know what’s going on, regardless of outcome, and that you aren’t going to react poorly.
My advice is to not assume the worst, but to make an attempt to have a conversation with your leadership to gain some clarity as to what’s going on. Maybe it turns out that it is time for you to leave, or maybe they’ve got something great planned for you that they just haven’t keyed you in on yet.
The ability to calmly approach the conversation seeking clarity with curiosity is a much better look for you and a smarter move. If they did have great plans for you in the works but hadn’t shared them yet, you may cost yourself that opportunity by reacting poorly to the situation. Be professional, be proactive, and once you have some clarity then decide what your best move is next.
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop