Feeling Disappointed, Gracefully

I’m bet­ting you have — at some point — expe­ri­enced absolute­ly incred­i­ble, top-qual­i­ty, 5‑star cus­tomer ser­vice. You know what I’m talk­ing about — when some­one goes the extra mile and a half to make your day. And here’s the thing — after you’ve expe­ri­enced it, and it’s not there, you notice! You miss it. Your expec­ta­tions of a cer­tain stan­dard were up there. Then, when they’re not met, it’s dis­ap­point­ing.

I work with a client who expe­ri­enced this exact prob­lem on a wider scale. He is an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful leader and he has very high stan­dards. He is very smart — almost always right — and runs a very suc­cess­ful orga­ni­za­tion. As you can imag­ine, the expec­ta­tions he has of his team are mas­sive. Those high stan­dards are in the rest of his life as well.

So…when those stan­dards were not met (which was often — because they were so high) he was feel­ing dis­ap­point­ed. The charis­mat­ic leader was trans­formed! He became an angry mess. A cof­fee order done wrong was a big deal. A deliv­ery that was run­ning late was a slight. A less-than-amaz­ing busi­ness quar­ter was catastrophic.

Sound famil­iar?

Good lead­ers have high stan­dards. They usu­al­ly come from an all-impor­tant con­cept relat­ed to run­ning a suc­cess­ful busi­ness. That con­cept is that com­pa­nies who pro­vide a ser­vice or a prod­uct are basi­cal­ly doing a ​“job” for a cus­tomer (so they don’t have to do it them­selves). The best com­pa­nies do an amaz­ing job of pro­vid­ing that ser­vice. A great leader push­es their peo­ple to hit that mark — but because that mark is usu­al­ly real­ly high — they also find them­selves con­stant­ly disappointed.

It’s that dis­ap­point­ment that can lead to prob­lems — that can show up at both home and at work. An angry response to dis­ap­point­ment can poten­tial­ly upset the peo­ple that are help­ing you. An angry response can cre­ate stress for you per­son­al­ly — it steals your men­tal ener­gy from the things that actu­al­ly mat­ter. An angry response also hurts your chances of hit­ting your quar­ter­ly goals, instead of mov­ing you toward them.

Anoth­er way peo­ple some­times deal with dis­ap­point­ment is to avoid it. Instead of say­ing some­thing, a leader will some­times say noth­ing at all. This is just as dan­ger­ous. Instead of the emo­tion­al response, there is no response, mean­ing the team mem­ber does­n’t even real­ly know that a stan­dard has­n’t been met.

So how can you — a moti­vat­ed and exact­ing leader — main­tain high stan­dards with­out hurt­ing peo­ple or your busi­ness? How can you stop your­self from react­ing off-the-cuff at key moments? How can you get them to per­form as you want them to?

The answer — feel­ing dis­ap­point­ed, gracefully

What is grace­ful dis­ap­point­ment? First­ly — it’s NOT about low­er­ing your stan­dards. Instead it’s about express­ing dis­ap­point­ment in a dif­fer­ent way. A) in a way that con­veys that expec­ta­tions were not met — but also B) in a way that moti­vates and encour­ages people.

What does that look like?

Method 1 — Change the View

The first thing I rec­om­mend­ed to my client was sim­ple. I asked him to change the view he had of the per­son he was deal­ing with:

• Con­sid­er that the per­son is doing the best they can with the resources they have.

Per­haps they are in the wrong role for their per­son­al­i­ty. Per­haps they had poor train­ing. The chances are — there is a rea­son for their mishap. That mishap is not the result of them being a BAD per­son — just the cir­cum­stances. This will help to cul­ti­vate compassion.

• Sec­ond­ly, view them as a peer rather than as a child.

Any­one who is a par­ent or has par­ents (that’s all of us) can tell you the way a par­ent speaks to a child is dif­fer­ent to the way they speak to their peers. When we are dis­ap­point­ed, it’s nat­ur­al to speak to a per­son as if they are a child — it shows up in our tone of voice. The bat­tle is on! But, if we imag­ine that per­son as some­one on the very same lev­el as our­selves — we instant­ly have a greater lev­el of respect for them. Our lan­guage is more graceful.

This method is an exam­ple of putting the rela­tion­ship first. Per­for­mance is impor­tant — of course — but so are rela­tion­ships. Cre­at­ing com­pas­sion in your approach cre­ates a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with key people.

Method 2 — Push it Back

How else can we devel­op grace­ful dis­ap­point­ment skills? Anoth­er method I rec­om­mend is to sim­ply push back the con­ver­sa­tion. You might end up say­ing some­thing like this:

“You know what, this isn’t right. Let me think about this and we can talk about it tomor­row. Some­thing isn’t right here and we’re going to need to fix this.”

This has two ben­e­fits. First­ly, it allows the leader time to calm them­selves after the dis­ap­point­ment. That ​“breath­ing room” will pro­vide time to strate­gize. Sec­ond­ly, it con­veys dis­ap­point­ment to the team-mem­ber with­out anger. The sim­ple state­ment that ​“some­thing isn’t right” will con­vey the key point — a stan­dard has not been met.

It’s a great way to be grace­ful and It’s a GREAT man­age­r­i­al tool.

Method 3 — Explain the Facts

If you pre­fer to han­dle things imme­di­ate­ly — my client cer­tain­ly does — con­sid­er allow­ing those unde­ni­able truths to con­vey your dis­ap­point­ment. It might sound like:

“Okay, I am dis­ap­point­ed here because this was a crit­i­cal project. We need­ed X and Y to be per­fect so that we could make Z hap­pen. We had a clear agree­ment that this was going to be done, and I need you to go and fig­ure out how we can fix this.”

This has the ben­e­fit of con­vey­ing dis­ap­point­ment with­out emo­tion. The CEO in this case man­ages to avoid the lec­ture and moti­vate the employ­ee to do bet­ter. This approach is all about infor­ma­tion — the details are the impor­tant part. What exact­ly was not done? Just express that part.

This will strip away the high lev­els of emo­tion. You end up with bet­ter judg­ment and a bet­ter chance of progress.

Note: This is Dif­fi­cult. Very Difficult.

Remem­ber that for all of this, as anx­i­ety or anger goes up, skill goes down. When a leader reacts to a dis­ap­point­ment from an emo­tion­al place — they make bad choic­es. When that anx­i­ety or anger is placed to the side, the CEO is able to make a bet­ter deci­sion for the com­pa­ny. Rela­tion­ships (whether at home or at work) get bet­ter and every­one push­es them­selves toward their goals.

It’s no mean feat — there’s a rea­son that monks spend years in the moun­tains try­ing to con­trol their emo­tions. But, it is also the true test of a great leader. If you are able to be grace­ful­ly dis­ap­point­ed, your team will work hard­er and attempt to meet your stan­dards every day of the week. Prac­tice on the small stuff — when food comes out half cooked or your car won’t start after com­ing back from the mechan­ic. Then let it work won­ders for you when it matters.

Have a great week.

Best

Kevin