No matter how long you have been in business it’s only a matter of time before you encounter a tough season. While the circumstances will vary — turmoil with a client, shifts in the industry, or challenges within your team — the stress you experience can take a toll on you and your productivity.
Rather than get blind-sided, we want to share a few things to keep in mind when going through a tough season. Not to go all Debbie-Downer on you, but chances are you are either in a tough season right now, or will be in one soon.
Let’s take a look at a few things to keep in mind when you find yourself in a tough season at work.
Keep Perspective
One of the most common things that can happen when encountering a tough season is to make up stories about how bad things are going to get. While that kind of sensationalized thinking can be very effective in movies or a 24-hour news cycle, it rarely serves the reality of a situation.
We also don’t want to let the pendulum swing too far in the opposite direction and put our heads in the proverbial sand about what is going on. Instead, make a goal to be grounded in reality about what is actually happening.
What is the true state of the client relationship? Are these industry shifts permanent or in response to other factors? Is this a pattern with a co-worker or just single day? Put on your detective hat and seek out the facts of the situation.
If you are struggling to keep your emotions from coloring your perspective, a good approach can be a tool we call “What A Video Would See.”
Here’s how it works — describe the situation objectively, as if watching it on video. A video doesn’t pick up, “The client was being a real jerk at that meeting.” Instead, the objective observation would be, “I could see he was giving short answers and looked at his phone repeatedly during our meeting.”
When you stick with the facts of the situation you may be able to glean a better understanding of what is going on. Maybe the client had something occur earlier in the day that was preoccupying him or her. When you are intentional about keeping perspective and staying objective, it helps you find productive solutions instead of simply reacting.
In the “preoccupied client” example, maybe a wise next step would be to reach out and check-in with the client. “Paul, I was picking up on some things during our presentation yesterday and I wanted to check-in on how you are feeling about the progress we’ve been making.”
This approach can result in a win-win. You can quickly find out if there is anything that needs to be addressed or if what you were picking up on has nothing to do with you. Also, you are communicating to the client how attentive you are and that you are willing to be proactive in addressing any issues.
Keep Showing Up
An important part of navigating a tough season is to keep showing up. Most challenges fall into one of two camps; you will either “Walk Through It” or “Work Through It”.
“Walk Through It” refers to situations where there isn’t a change that needs to be made, it’s just an unpleasant circumstance that needs to be navigated.
There isn’t anything that can be done about a client cutting back because of changes within their business, or a co-worker having a bad day. Those are moments that you just need to walk through.
However, when you stay engaged during a tough season you may identify some problems that need to be addressed.
This is where the idea of “Work Through It” comes into play. Does the change in activity with a client identify that you have allowed your sales and marketing efforts to decline? Does the challenge with a co-worker point to a gap in your project process?
In those cases you are showing up and doing the work that you identified from an objective understanding of the situation. It’s may not be easy, but the plain truth is that we learn more from the painful times than the easy times. (Ugh, hard but true)
So put that pain to good use — do the work to learn and make the necessary changes.
Keep Relationship
The last piece we want to share about navigating a tough season is to ensure that you have support in your relationships. This can be in the form of colleagues who understand your situation, a life coach, or good friend.
When going through a tough season, it’s tempting to isolate ourselves and withdraw from others. While there is nothing wrong with taking time to check-in with yourself about how you are doing, you want to remain aware of how long you stay in that space.
Depending upon your personality type, the way this looks like may vary, but having at least one person who you can share the reality of a tough season can be the difference between that season becoming a blip on the radar versus a deep dive into despair.
Be intentional about having trusted relationships in place prior to a tough season. Invest in others and be that kind of person for someone, so when a challenge hits you have a support system in place.
We hope this gave you some thoughts to consider, as well as encouragement for navigating tough seasons. While no one chooses to walk through this kind of situation, when we have ideas about how to navigate them, it can really make a difference.
Finally, we’d like to end with a quote from Mike Ditka (Da Bears) that is a good reminder when dealing with tough seasons… “Success isn’t permanent and failure isn’t fatal; it’s the courage to continue that counts.”
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