Thursday 28 May 2015

Hannah Fox's Diary 17- The Big Meeting



Back in the office today and was called in for a meeting with Clive. He was full of praise for all the work I did to make the Kitchen Yard sales launch such a success.  On one hand I was pleased to get some recognition but on the other hand I am still annoyed at Clive for all the times he has gone off on freebies without telling me. The point is that I am becoming more annoyed with the situation and I don’t want it to affect everything else.

I had taken time to plan what I was going to say as I knew this opportunity would come up at some point.  I decided to just focus on how I was feeling about the Kitchen Yard contract rather than bringing up a host of other things, like Clive expecting me to spend extra time chasing the client satisfaction surveys and dumping extra work on me a moments notice... It was quite daunting as these things are important but I needed to be specific and it would be easy to get side tracked if I wasn’t careful.  I decided to use the Fact Feel Want method.

FACT
"I began talking to the sales team at Kitchen Yard after they contacted me 6 months ago. I did a lot of groundwork to find out how the company worked and did a lot of scene setting of how Maxisales could manage the account by giving them a comprehensive breakdown of the different POS options."
I took the file copy so I could show all the stages I went through. I then went on to say about the perks Clive attended without telling me that I was invited as well. I showed him the emails they sent saying how it would have been nice to have met me.

FEEL
When I went on to the feel bit I did feel a bit shaky and emotional, I had spent the previous 5 mins doing a calming breathing exercise and felt relatively in control, also I practised what I was going to say in my head a few times so I did feel relatively calm and just began telling Clive, 
"I feel hurt, undervalued and quite insecure. I also feel like I'm not respected and backed into a corner, as I would never be unprofessional and say anything to the client."
At this point Clive went in on the defensive and jumped in and said,
“I didn’t make you feel like that”. 
I responded with,
“That’s not what I said Clive, I said this is how I feel, not that you are making me feel this way".
Clive continued to say that he wasn’t undervaluing me so I reiterated that I felt undervalued.  I found it really hard and still felt quite emotional but I think he was getting my ‘dripping tap’ message so in the pause I went on to the want part.

WANT
The want bit was easier than I thought as I kept it specific ….I said,
"I am the National Account Manager and want to be included and recognised for doing all the hard work in building the relationship with Kitchen Yard . This means that in the future we should present a united front at events and either take turns or both go. Also I would like to invite Kitchen Yard to our offices and host the event so they can meet me and see that I’m in charge of the account."
Clive thought about my proposal and said he had already thought I should go to the next launch of their new outlet opening (really!) but wanted to co-host the event here with me. I was willing to meet him half way on this so we wound up the meeting on good terms.

Clive said he was glad we had this chat because he’d noticed I was not looking too happy and disappearing at lunch time and thought it was because of the smell of Graeme's lunch. He then went on to say he may have made a mistake buying the microwave for the office and would I like to have a word with Graeme about not cooking curries.

Mmmm looks like I will have to find an innovative way of saying NO!

Work

Happier now I’ve tackled the problem.

Family 
Amelia is sticking to her promise to look after the guinea pig and so far so good. Rita is very cute!

Social 
Out with Darren tomorrow night as he is not working away.

Well-being 

Enjoying my walks at lunch times – feeling a lot fitter.



Hannah Fox is a character.  She is based on our years of experience working for a national mental health charity supporting people facing stress in the workplace.  The names and characters are not based on any one person and all similarities are purely incidental.  However, hopefully we can all see a little bit of ourselves in Hannah.

Point to Ponder
Do you have anything that's really getting to you that a Fact Feel Want conversation might help? 

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