“ I agreed to pay him so much that I’ll end up losing money each time he covers for me,” complained Samantha.

As Samantha’s coach, I jumped to full alert. I had heard this story before. As the owner of a small computer servicing company, she had been so focused on covering her “off-hours” shifts that she had gotten into financial difficulty before by paying very high fees to other IT professionals.

In fact, she had resentfully gone without a paycheck for months at a time in order to keep her company afloat.

“What happened?”

“Once I agreed to pay him more than I could afford just to cover the shift, he told me he also wanted to be paid extra for every service call.”

“Why did you accept those conditions when you know you can’t afford them?”

“I KNOW he won’t accept the work unless I give in, and I really need the coverage. I’m covering too many shifts myself as it is. I’m SURE he’ll go away if I don’t do this. You know how hard it is for me to find anyone really qualified who is willing to do this kind of work.”

Samantha has all the information she needs to successfully manage the finances of her company. She has good advisors and a sound business plan. Yet she keeps undercutting herself and setting herself up for failure by making unrealistic agreements. And she justifies doing so by exaggerating what might happen if she stands up for herself.

So what is really going on here?

Samantha is afraid to negotiate. She refuses to take a stand that might irritate someone else. No matter how outrageous a request is, she is convinced that if she says no, the other party will walk away, leaving her without the services she needs.

Each time she makes an agreement with someone she feels like she loses and the other party wins. Intellectually she understands what a win-win agreement is, but she has never actually experienced a situation where both negotiators feel satisfied with the outcome.

Because of my background as a psychotherapist, I know that this belief system is not rational. Certainly her behavior does not look very rational. Both her beliefs and behavior are the result of experiences she had as a child.

Samantha and I have an agreement that I can identify therapy issues that come up in coaching. I already know that she grew up as a middle child who always had to defer to the needs of her older brother and younger sister. Her life experience was that her needs were not important and theirs were.

I suspected, and asked her, if she felt like she used to feel when she was a child (whose needs were not important) when she made the latest untenable financial arrangement. She readily admitted that she did.

Once Samantha realized that she was re-enacting an old situation where she actually was powerless, she decided that she needed to do something different.

She didn’t have the courage to reopen the negotiation with the man she had hired. Instead she found someone else who would cover the extra shifts for a reasonable fee. She rarely scheduled the one who overcharged and eventually he moved on.

Samantha has become alert to situations where her old beliefs interfere with her business success. She knows she is still vulnerable and we are still working on developing her negotiation skills.

Coaching Tip: People make non-rational decisions over and over again, based their early life experiences. When you know WHY you keep doing something that is against your better interests, it will be easier to change that non-productive behavior.

Is this you? “I don’t need therapy, but I could use some advice about…”

[tags]Management Development, Managing Conflict Managing Fear, Self-Management, Management, Business Communication, Coaching Conflict, Difficult Communication[/tags]

written by Laurie Weiss