January 24, 2019

Compose thyself

Sent by Jonathan Stark on January 24th, 2019

There was a thread today in TPS that I thought was wonderful. It was about what to do when you receive challenging feedback. 

For example, let’s say a client sends you a terse email about:

What would you do? Fire off a hasty reply in anger? Get defensive? Try to shift the blame?

The consensus (me included) was that it’s virtually always best to wait before replying in situations like this. Double check that you read the message right. Give it time to sink in. Try to understand where they’re coming from. Sleep on it. Then compose a reasonable reply that is not emotionally driven.  

In short: 

First compose yourself, then compose your reply.

Yours,

—J

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