Could it be fear of confrontation?

(This is a series of posts exploring my goals and direction for life…)

So last time, after talking about the worth of work and what is appropriate to charge, I realized my struggle could lie around the fear of confrontation.

I can think of two things this could be:

1. A fear that someone calls my bluff and tells me my work isn’t worth what I am asking for it.
2. Someone asking for less money in the form of negotiation.

It easily could be a combination of both. If I look back at my newspaper route, that fear was being called out that I had waited so long to come collect money. And why did I wait? Because even though I had a contract with these people, the idea of asking for money made me nervous. They weren’t going to tell me no, but it too me so much willpower to get my guts up to go collect (and then they wouldn’t be home and I’d have to go again?!).

In researching this idea, I found an amazing post about business owners having tough conversations. A few quotes that jumped out at me:

“As a business owner, you will absolutely have to confront people, probably on a regular basis.”

“When you avoid these conversations and put them off for days, weeks, months and years, you lose money, you lose sleep and you lose the opportunity to make a change in your business that could usher in your next level.”

And I think my favorite:

“In my opinion, a successful confrontation is one where both parties leave the conversation knowing where they stand. That’s it. You say what you have to say and the other party says what they have to say, and you both decide whether that means you’ll be changing your relationship, continuing to work together, no longer working together, making adjustments to a bill, redistributing responsibilities, etc. That is enough because confrontation needs to occur when the status quo is no longer working for you, so speaking up to put change in motion is all you need.”

She then goes on to list steps you can do to prepare for the confrontation. My favorite step was to “detach from the outcome”. I love this because I have NO problem negotiating on behalf of my work. I will sit in call after call, playing the game because my “pride” isn’t tied to the outcome at all. Based on this article, it sounds like if I really want to be a business owner I need to detach ME from THE BUSINESS…

Image by Óscar Montero from Pixabay