What kind of response do you get when you need to honor yourself with someone by saying “no” to them? I had to do this once with a business partner, and it was one of the hardest things to do.

It wasn’t just a “No, I can’t help you”, it was a, “Hey, I know we’ve been planning a project together for over a month and a half now, and I know we’re going to have a conference call about it on Sunday, but I need to bow out now. I realize I’m fifty percent of the project, and that without me, you really won’t be able to finish it, at least in a short amount of time, but I have to back out.”

I’ll tell you, it was hard to click send on that email. It was an email instead of a phone call because I really wanted to word my message so it conveyed all my thoughts without interruption.

In a live call or conversation, you could say one word and the entire conversation could go into an emotional spiral. Tempers can flare and your message may never get heard. The only thing that might be conveyed is that you are abandoning them. [Read more…]