How To Handle Surprises As A Business Owner
Surprises are sudden events that occur in the line of business without your planning or consent.
They could be caused by your clients, staff, stakeholders, or yourself sometimes.
Every business owner has had to deal with unpleasant surprises once or many times, I have also had my fair share.
And if you are about to start a business, handling surprises smoothly is an important skill you must learn.
When unpleasant surprises happen, what do you do? Panic? Lose your temper?
In this post, I have shared three tips that work for me in such situations and I hope you learn from them.
Stay calm.
I have learnt over time that anxiety or panic solves nothing; instead, it makes you agitated and you can end up making the wrong decision that would further worsen the situation.
Losing your temper doesn’t work as well especially when the unpleasant surprise was caused by a member of your staff or someone else.
The ability to stay calm in the midst of an unpleasant situation may seem tough or unrealistic, but like every skill, it can be learnt.
When you master this skill and demonstrate it, you will be able to make good decisions with a clear mind.
Assess the situation.
Now that you are calm, the next step is to critically examine the situation with fresh eyes. This step will help you ask questions like:
How and why did this happen?
Is there something I could have done to prevent this?
What is the best approach to fixing this problem without causing another?
How can I do to stop or manage such occurrence in the future?
These questions will help you to analyse all possible scenarios and discover the cause of the unpleasant surprise. You can do this alone or involve your team for mutual efforts.
Plug the gap.
The final tip is to plug the gap — find a lasting situation.
This stage becomes easy after you have adopted the tips mentioned above.
When you are calm and all questions have been answered, the solution will come.
Then, you can move on and anticipate the next surprise.
