I’ve recently had a couple experiences where it could have been very easy to escalate a few situations. One was a client who was looking to improve search rank, but I ended up becoming the help desk. Not fun. Fixing various problems constantly that had nothing to do with marketing, then it didn’t sit well when the client had eaten up his marketing time with help desk time. Both myeslf and the client were dissatisfied with the result. I knew long term this wouldn’t be a project of any benefit to either of us because of lack of understanding of each other’s expectations. Also he had multiple projects that were beyond my current workload and I could see the demands exceeding the supply of my time. Not a good thing for either of us in the long run. I killed the contract but as we were having communication issues, I terminanted over email. (NOT GOOD!) He was upset and rightfully so about the method of termination.
While both of us bear responsibility for the situation, me for poor communication, and him for unreasonable expectations, he gave me a bad review to someone who of course told me about it.
The possible choices of what I could do were easy:
- Escalate it – by calling him out and heating things up
- Address it – by professionally having a conversation
- Do nothing – blow it off
- Blog about it – doing that now
I’m actually choosing options 2-4 on this one. Everything BUT escalation is the solution. This is applicable in many situations. While mistakes were made on both parts, this person is a good business person and I like to think that I am as well.
As a business owner you’ll have many situations like this. ”Learning experiences like this”. Often the only way you learn how to handle them is by mis-handling them. Looking back my communication should have been better however he still would have been upset either way upon ending it but it might have gone a bit smoother.
Had I chosen to escalate it, and get upset, it would have been ugly. Little good besides regret can come out of these things. Let’s face it. Regret and escalation tax your time seriously. They produce no rewards but are great at tearing down relationships that were built up over serious amounts of time. Avoid them.
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