Difficult Conversation Follow Up

Well, I had the conversation with Chad this morning.  I picked my power outfit (I’ll spare you the fashion details, but it’s one of my favorite dresses), and I felt like even more of a badass in it after biking to work – never thought I’d be biking anywhere in anything other than some sort of spandex gym clothes or jeans I don’t care about.

The conversation started to go down a similar path as in the past, which is to say, avoidance of the giant elephant in the room that I’m doing a completely different job than I was hired for with no acknowledgement in any way.  So, I called it out.

2 things that stood out for me that were different than before:

*First, I was better able to express my frustration in a positive way – that I want to be able to add the highest amount of value to this company by prioritizing the right tasks and having the time to do them well.

*This seemed to allow him to open up to me and be more transparent than he had been before by acknowledging that he was (and has been) struggling to convince the upper management of the value of building community internally versus the value of staffing a more robust marketing/business development team.

I remembered your comment from yesterday @Jess about being able to see the situation from the other person’s viewpoint and I really clearly saw/felt that today.

I didn’t reach my epic goal (new title, new salary stated/signed off on in the meeting), but I pushed for a concrete follow up plan.  He is meeting with the Finance Director tomorrow and promised to follow up with me directly afterwards.  At a minimum, he assured me we are posting to hire for the part-time person by Friday of this week.  Once hired, I will be directly managing this person, which is exciting for me!

My new challenge/assignment:  narrowing down the top 3 priorities/projects I’d like to focus on moving forward so that we can better redefine my role.  Caveat – my priorities/projects should take into consideration revenue earning potential as a way to sell it to the management team – game on!

Overall, I walked away from the conversation feeling a lot better than I have in the past, and regardless of what happens moving forward I’ve got my BATNA – thanks for the acronym Eugene Chan 🙂  So grateful for all of the feedback/support Bootcamp team – more to come!  Looking forward to hopefully seeing you all and working with you all again in the near future.