From The Business Coaching Chronicles Confrontation Is A Good Thing

One of the things most self-employed businessowners, entrepreneurs and solo professionals dislike is confrontation.  What I have seen time and again in my personal business coaching practice is that avoiding confrontation very often causes problems to fester, grow bigger and explode.

Confrontation The Wrong Way

I had a client with seven employees.  One employee was the manager over the others.  She was confrontational with everyone, including the owners who were in a partnership.  But, no one confronted her.  When confrontation is one way it really is a form of bullying.

This business, which had been thriving before her arrival, started to slowly head in the wrong direction.  Employee morale was bad.  The owners saw what was happening but refused to stand up to her.  Her bullying and confrontational tactics were about her power, not an effort to improve the business.

Confrontation The Right Way

Confrontation, when used to advance ideas or improvements is good.  In fact, you cannot have improvement without questions that confront the status quo.  But, when confrontation is purely about personal control it is bad for all concerned, including the person who initiates it.

Small business success, let alone personal success cannot be achieved without others.  Confrontation the right way is about “What’s right” not “Who’s Right.”  When it is about “Who’s right” it is impossible to build a team and to accomplish goals over the long-term.

No matter how much online training, corporate training, business training, business courses or business skills training you have had confrontation of the wrong type is a difficult challenge.

Confrontation-The Solution

Too often, people let other people run over them because they do not want confrontation.  All this does is encourage the person who is doing the confronting or bullying to do it more.  Starting your own business or running a small business has enough challenges but I can assure you as a personal business coach you must have the right mindset about confrontation.

It is hard to accept but confrontation can be a good thing.  Confrontation is about clarity.  If you think about it, clarity is hard to come by without opposing points of view on complicated and sometimes even simple matters.

Once the business owners I was collaborating with understood that they needed clarity and that confrontation was the means to achieve it they took action.  The bullying employee was given a performance review with specific times and incidents where her behavior was not appropriate.

Interestingly, her behavior got worse after the review.  Then we knew it was not about her doing a good job but about her having power.  But there was a dividend from the confrontation between the owners and the employee.

The other employees saw that the owners were willing to stand up to her.  As a result, they started coming forward one by one and telling the owners what was really going on with the business and how she was not doing her job.  What they related happened to be true.

The employees confronted the owners and this started the process of bringing clarity.  Things became very clear to the point where the owners fired the employee.  With this one employee gone turnover decreased over the next year by 70%.  Customer satisfaction surveys were increasingly positive.  And the best part, the business was a happy place and more profitable.

The next time you are thinking of avoiding confrontation remember this.  Confrontation, more often than not is your pathway to clarity and a better future.

Author bio: More detailed information can be found at www.thehoustonbusinesscoach.com Created by Scott Steve. The definitive guide to a better business and a better you for entrepreneurs, solo professionals and self-employed individuals striving to reach the top and who are serious about their success. 

Are You Creating The Small Business You Want To Run?

As a personal business coach one of the great joys is watching the creation of a small business.  It’s like painting a portrait on which you can put your autograph.  But unlike a painting which at some point is finished, the creation part never really ends and running a small business too, is an ongoing process.

What To Keep In Mind In Small Business

I once read that Warren Buffett once said, “Success is getting what you want.  Happiness is wanting what you get.”  Success for many small business owners is in creating their small business.  And for many that is their happiest time.  Why?

For many small business owners, running or maintaining the small business is not what they enjoy.  Most entrepreneurs love creating.  The key to having the continued success and happiness, which Warren Buffett spoke about, is to develop the skills to manage the business.

In the words of Michael Gerber in the E-Myth Revisited, you not only need to be a good “technician,” which is creating and delivering the product or service, but also a good “manager.”  I have found that the major stumbling block for most self-employed business owners is management.

Are You Running The Small Business You Want?

Fortunately, today, as opposed to 30 years ago, there are tools, processes and information to where the small business owner can learn to become a better manager.  But even if you manage your business well, there can still be a great deal of unhappiness.

Why?  The skills and relationships you need to create a successful small business are not the skills needed to run a small business.  And, very often we get into a business because we know how to create it, not run it.
In my personal business coaching practice, I had one lady who wanted to start a retail shop stocked with items to decorate the interior of people’s homes.  She was an excellent interior decorator.

Small Business Happiness Is Wanting What You Get

In her mind, having a retail shop to support and amplify her existing business and to where she could meet prospective clients was a huge plus.  Logically, it all made sense.

As we collaborated on putting together the retail operation I started to have an uneasy feeling.  When she spoke of retail business the tone and the discussion was negative.  She had worked in retail as a young girl and didn’t like all the “problems” with people, inventory, etc that would come up.

I asked her if she would be happy working in her own retail environment?  After much thought and discussion over several weeks, the answer was No.  She realized that she could not be happy in her own retail store.  Yes, she would have help.  But, she realized that still she would feel in bondage to it.

And for a free spirit such as her, feeling in bondage was the height of unhappiness.    She ended up acceleration her efforts and sharpening her focus on her current business model.

Today, she has a successful small business.  And she is happy.  She understood first hand that success may be getting what you want but that there is something more important, happiness, which is wanting what you get.

When you are looking for success in small business be sure to factor in happiness.  Without happiness, there is no true small business success.