One of the things I focus on with people that I work with is that how you frame these tasks determines whether you want to do them and are eager to do them, or fearful of them. Because if you're fearful of it, what's it going to come across like?

So yeah, you might do it, but it will probably go something like this: imagine I've got to break the news to a client that he's just lost the house that he was buying. The sellers are withdrawing, and I'm really scared about telling him. How's that going to come across to the client?

He's going to be going, “Oh, for God's sake! I've spent all of this money buying this house, why would they do that?” If I haven’t prepared for the call, I won’t have any answers. I won’t have any way to show the client that there is a way forward.

I've done those calls, guys, over the years. I've made those unprepared calls, and they've always gone down really, really badly. But it would go well if I framed the conversation properly and prepared for it.

Let’s look at two examples of how preparation makes a difficult task manageable.

Back to telling a client he’s lost the house he was buying. What if, instead of getting scared and not preparing, I had thought to myself:

Is this the right house for the client? He's not going to get it. What can I do to help him move forward? How can I help him find an even better house that meets his needs in order to make sure that he feels like there's a plan to move forward?

After thinking through those questions, I’d make a list of prospecting ideas and letters that I can do just for the client. Then I’d know that when I ring him and I give him the bad news, I've actually got some really good news to trump it with.

For the estate agents watching this, how many times has this happened? How many times have the buyers ended up with something even better than the one that they've lost out on? More often than not, right?

That's why we've got to think about this strategy. So I’d say eat a frog for breakfast, but prepare that frog, right? Get it, skin it. Oh, sorry, I shouldn't really say that. But you understand my point, get prepared.

If you're not prepared, you're going to feel nervous.

There's a great saying that you need to prepare beyond nervousness. Prepare beyond nervousness.

Also, framing this conversation will be easier if you’ve properly managed your clients’ expectations in the first place. Check out this post for help doing that: “Managing Buyer & Seller Expectations”.

Let's say someone in the team you’re managing in your estate agency is causing problems. And you've got to have this difficult conversation.

Recently, someone I've worked with as an estate agent coach, rang me, just said,

"Look, I need you for 10 minutes, Matt. Can I pick your brains? Got this guy, really great guy over the years, but in the last couple of years, he’s fallen off the tracks. You know, he’s had problems out of work, and his performance in the role has just not been good enough. And I've said to him, he needs to do this. He needs to do that. And he needs to be at this level, and he needs to be hitting these results. And it's just not working."

My client was stressed, as a lot of business owners are right now, because being a business owner or a manager of an estate agency is bloody hard, right? Managing the general public's hard, managing people's hard, getting through these conversations can be really difficult, especially when there's so much emotion wrapped up into that. So, I said to him,

"Look, you're going to have this difficult conversation.

It can be difficult if you prepare for difficulty, right? If you're going to say it's difficult, it's going to be difficult. Why don't you just have a natural conversation with him? Doesn't have to be difficult, it can be natural. You as the business owner have him working with you in your business.

What are your expectations? What does he think you expect of him? And is he in line with those expectations?"

My client came back with:

"No, no, no. No clear expectations, no clear alignment, no conversation. It's all about results. For two or three years, I've kind of cut him some slack. Now I really need him to perform all of a sudden. But he's just used to rocking up when he wants to rock up, doing what he needs to do, just enough, and getting paid for those bigger results."

It doesn't work like that.

The first question I'd ask anyone in this situation is, “How do you feel it's going?” Because most good people, and I'm saying 99% of the good people will know that they're letting you down.

They'll know that they're not performing. They'll know that they're not at the races, or whatever you want to call it. And they'll know that your conversation is going to go down the pathway of understanding why.

So the first thing is to really understand their situation. Put yourself in their shoes, rather than coming at this for what you need, what you can get.

You know, managing people is a bit like prospecting. When you prospect trying to get something out of someone versus trying to give someone your time, your insights, your knowledge, you'll get two completely different outcomes.

My recommendation to you about eating a frog for breakfast is to look at the task and then prepare well.

Yeah, so my client’s side of this conversation went something like this:

How are you doing? I just wanted to see how it's going because I've noticed one or two things.

Do you mind if I share some observations?

What do you think I'm really looking for from you in the role and how do you want me to support you, reward you for achieving those things?

Should we just take a look at where you're at at the minute? What do you feel you can do to improve? What can I do to support you? What are the things that you're going to need help with moving forward?

Now that's a much healthier conversation, which is actually going to get you both to the right outcome. It will tell you the answer to this question: does the employee actually want to do this job? More often than not, it's “Yes!”

What most people can't do is separate what happens outside from what happens inside work. You know, if there are problems outside, they tend to come inside. How do you separate that? How do you help someone to separate that?

There's a great model which is to look at what you can and can’t control.

So I’d ask an employee, “Can you control what happens outside of work, inside work?” They’d say, “No, I can't.”

I’d follow that by saying that if you're going to put your energy there, it's going to affect you here. So 100% of what you do at the moment is going to be affected by those factors. Then, I’d ask, “Do you want that to happen in your work?”

Of course they don’t, so I’d ask what I can do to support them. Their answer might go like this: “So you know what, keep me focused.”

I've had these conversations with people before and often what they need is help to focus while they’re going through whatever challenge they’re going through. God, I've had some employees dealing with serious challenges over the years that I wasn't even aware of until we had the conversation.

That’s why the first question I ask is always, “Tell me, how do you feel it's going? How are you at the minute?” It helps you to bring these things to light.

Now, I'm far from perfect in these situations. As a typical ADHDer, my mind's everywhere. My mind is on what I want to get across rather than what I really want to listen to and understand.

So know that this will take you guys a lot of energy. You might do this a bit later in the day after you've completed some small wins, you know? You've made the slide deck that you needed to do. You've updated those two clients that you needed to update. You've had that meeting for marketing that you needed to have. So you've already ticked things off your list you feel like you're achieving. Does that make sense?

When you get to the difficult task in your day, just do enough prep to feel that confidence. The first two or three questions are the most important, so focus your prep there. But hopefully, guys, you'll see that the frog you should be eating for breakfast is the correctly prepared one.

So there you have it. Should you eat a frog for breakfast? And that's my take, my experience on trying to make sure that you nail the difficult tasks and conversations earlier in your day.

But I'm also a realist. I've been an estate agent for 28 years. I know how freaking hard it is just to get to your desk in the morning, plan your day, and get through stuff, right?

But if you can prioritize what you need to prioritize, you'll move forward a lot quicker with great preparation as well. You need to come with me on this journey, so check out the free training I have for you over on my YouTube channel. While you’re there, make sure you ring the bell so you’ll know when I post new training videos and be sure to comment and ask questions so I know what you need from me.