From Our Archive

Few weeks after I signed up as a career mentor at my company, I got a notification saying someone selected me as her mentor. I got quite excited. I prepared myself with an action plan, how to measure progress and all sorts of things. Then came the first meeting day — we met, we talked. She also came prepared with her “want to achieve” list handy, I though, wow, this is going to be easy!

But wait! the big surprise was still waiting for me. When I asked her about her work life and what brings her to me, she started saying how unhappy and stressed out she had been with her work, how it had been affecting her personal life with her husband and her little one. I came down to reality — to be honest, I got quite scared — how am I going to help, should I just ask her to quit?

But I decided to give it a try; let’s apply some of those techniques I learnt from the women’s conference I attended lately. I explained her the Power of Positive Confrontation.

I figured, she could use these possible options,

1. To have an open discussions with her manager about her current work load, her area of interest and what she is willing to accept (a possible pay cut may be) in order to have a better work life balance. If this doesn’t get a momentum she should talk to her manager’s manager as well.

2. To look for other job in another team (in case #1 doesn’t work or takes too long).

I helped her explain the situation — A manager’s goal is to have happy employees, so by letting him know her situation is a way to help him realize his goals as well. I also mentioned that no manager is willing to loose a good employee. I suggested her to think through her goals and the issues that are blocking her from achieving those. She agreed to give it a try (not to mention I had to throw one of my best pitches to boost up her moral ).

As per our discussion, she brought up her concern to her manager in a very constructive way. Later on she also mentioned this to her manager’s manager when she found an opportunity for the same. It worked! Pleasantly surprised, she found that they appreciated that she brought up the issue and were willing to accommodate her needs and agreed to eventually move her to a role she has intended for. They promised her some changes with some specific timeline. She won her first battle.

It took them almost six months (as they promised) to come back to her with the bigger result, in the mean time she continued her regular duties with great professionalism, documented all her work and was ready with transition document to help the next person learn about the position duties. Not to mention she regularly followed up with her managers from time to time asking about the progress of the transition process.

The other day, when we met I found her very relieved; with a great smile she tells me that she has achieved what she was hoping for and now she is feeling more enthusiastic and energetic about her work and her life. What a great news!

We summarized this experience as:

You are the one who knows what you want, what works for you and you are the one who needs to work on that. If you demonstrate a positive attitude, most likely that other people will come forward to help. Unless you take the move there is little chance that things will improve automatically. Being in a less comfortable position sometimes motivates us to use our inner potential to strive for making things better and thus helps us grow towards a more capable human being. The power is in You.