Creating Confident Leaders - Dealing With Rejection

Happy September everyone, I hope you are gearing up for the 2^nd“New Year” of the year and feeling ready to give your all to the last quarter of 2019.

I wanted to look today at one of the trickiest challenges in terms of our confidence.  REJECTION……………  It’s a tough topic and a tough thing to experience, especially for leaders.   However, its an inevitable part of human experience and very often leads us to something better so we have to learn to deal with it.

I have talked previously about having a sense of purpose, leading from your values and doing the right thing.   However, one of the most challenging things to deal with is when you believe in your purpose and vision, you are leading from deeply held values, working on your inner critic and motivations and truly believe you are doing the right thing and leading in the right direction and yet…………………..Bang – “they”hate it!!   You come up against resistance, cynicism, negativity, apathy, sometimes ridicule and/or downright refusal!

What then?

How do you come back from that feeling of rejection?  It will inevitably create self doubt, questioning of yourself, the temptation to give in, change course, do the “easy” rather than the right thing. 

We ALL struggle with this, just as rejection is part of the human experience, so is the pain of that.  Its absolutely normal to feel hurt when we experience rejection…………however, the key is to find ways of moving past the hurt.  This is particularly important for leaders as being resilient and recovering from setbacks quickly is all part of confident leadership.

So how do we do this?

One of the quotes from Richard Branson is in response to a question he was asked about how he dealt with setbacks and rejection and he said that he was like everyone else, he just wanted to crawl under the duvet when this happened.  HOWEVER, the difference is – he allowed himself a day to feel that pain and wish to hide away, BUT ONLY FOR ONE DAY MAXIMUM.  He said the time got shorter as he became more accustomed to dealing with this, so often it might just be an hour.   Feel the pain and acknowledge you feel hurt, give yourself the day or the hour but don’t dwell on it.  Remember, whatever we give our attention to increases, so if you give consistent attention to the hurt, it will increase and become ever more incapacitating.

The important thing is to question yourself about whether you really are doing the right thing.  Take time out, give yourself thinking time, meditation and mindfulness are powerful tools when you need to “observe yourself”.   If your heart is telling you that you are heading in the right direction, then you must listen to that – NOT the naysayers.   Then take a very very deep breath and consciously decide you can and will move past this.

Making a very conscious decision about this is really important.  When we say to ourselves – “I CAN AND I WILL”, our thoughts and feelings automatically start to shift around this.  Sometimes we have to shout those words loudly to ourselves in order to drown out the self doubt.  Remember also what I said in an earlier blog about dealing with the inner critic.  The inner critic can be far more powerful than any external critic – don’t let that voice take hold.

Also, ask for help! Get hold of your supporters, your mastermind, your coach, your mentor and talk it through with them.  Getting an objective yet supportive view at this stage will help you to restore your self belief.   Asking for help is not weakness – its strength and its vital at this stage. So find your help – its always there if you just ask!!

THEN and ONLY THEN, start to rethink your strategy.  What can you do differently to come back from the rejection and get a different response? Often you realise its your strategy not your message that’s been rejected.  Ask yourself also “what is the lesson here and what is the even better thing this rejection is leading me to?”  This is also a very powerful question – when you can see the “better on the other side possibilities”, then you really start to fly.

Above all, remember ………DON’T QUIT………………I love this poem about not quitting.   I found it on a postcard the year my Dad died and have kept it by me ever since for the times when I feel I want to give up❤️

Have a great week and if you have enjoyed this article, sign up now to receive all of my posts, blogs and articles.