11/20/2017

How to Deliver Rejection Right

Rejections work better if they serve less as dismissals, more as check-in opportunities

Books designed to inspire people in the business world are often larded with tales of rejection. Famous novelist X had her novel rejected by dozens of publishers before finding a sympathetic one; world-beating entrepreneur Y had doors slammed in his face countless times before hitting the jackpot with one smart investor.

As arguments for the virtue of persistence, such stories are valuable enough. But those anecdotes rarely get into an interesting and under-discussed aspect of rejection: How were those rejections delivered, and what helped those brilliant people persevere in spite of them?

Being a leader means spending a lot of time saying “no” to ideas, but leaders don’t always spend a lot of time also thinking about what that “no” requires of them. As a small way of fixing that, it might help to consider what’s running through the mind of those who’ve just had their ideas torpedoed. There’s a good glimpse into that in a recent Fast Company article titled “Your Boss Just Rejected Your Idea? Ask These Three Questions Right Away.”

Please click here to read the complete article from Associations Now.