I am standing outside of a conference when this woman is approaching me, and she doesn’t look angry, but she’s on a mission. She’s coming at me, she’s got this look on her face, and I’m thinking, okay, I can’t wait to hear! I mean, what’s the drama? What’s happening?
And she tells me, “I got promoted.” And I’m thinking, okay, well, that’s not what I was expecting. I mean, typically somebody who got promoted has a smile and they’re enthusiastic, so I was dying to know what is the situation. Well, she had just received the news that she had been offered the promotion the night before, and we’d been at this conference for a couple of days.
So last night she’s talking to her husband about the promotion, and she’s really confused whether or not she should take it. On the one hand, this promotion would give her some accolades and recognition, it would give her a new opportunity, possibly a new challenge, and it would pay more. However, her current job, she really liked. She felt she was getting paid fairly and she just wasn’t sure, what do I do? How do I handle this?
If she declines the promotion, what are the consequences? What are the risks? If she accepts it, what might happen? I mean, if we could have a crystal ball, right? Which we don’t. Well come to find out, all of the communication she had been having with her manager over this promotion was over email. Now, part of this was because she was at the conference and she had just found out, but that was kind of the halting point where I said, okay, the email needs to stop.
When we’re thinking about any major decision, we have to open up the lines of communication – but the lines of communication are not ideally open via email.
If you’re faced with a situation like this, as I shared with her, you’ve got to schedule time to have a live conversation. Obviously, you need to be prepared and there are certain questions you need to ask, but we all too often try to solve things via just email. And we have to be willing to either pick up a phone, schedule a virtual meeting, or schedule a meeting in person and have open dialogue.
Really, truly, when we need to make decisions, in order to get all the information we need to make an informed decision, we have to have a dialogue – not written communication over email. So that was the first thing that I shared with her. If you are contemplating whether it’s a promotion or anything, should I do this or do that? Make sure that you’ve got that open line of communication.
Then I encouraged her to make a pretty swift decision. I didn’t want her to rush into it, but we don’t want to go to the opposite end and really linger or really swirl around. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in that situation where you know, I need to make a decision, but you keep going back and forth and contemplating. And then when you finally made the decision, you feel so much better.
It was the whole process leading up to the decision making or making the decisions; the decision making process is oftentimes more painful than just the decision itself. So give a time limit, make a decision. And as I mentioned, we don’t have a crystal ball. So once the decision is made, just own it. Will it be perfect? Most likely not, but guess what? No decision is going to be perfect.
We don’t know what lies on the other end, but stand confidently in the fact that you’re making a decision and something, whether it’s good or a lesson that you’re going to learn, something will come out on the other side.
But don’t kick yourself and don’t stir in this. The next time you’re offered a promotion or you’re offered some sort of opportunity where you have to make a pretty big decision, and you may believe you’re going through all of the pros and cons, at the end of the day make sure you’ve got that communication open, make a pretty swift decision, and just live in it and move forward!