Many will know the following situation. You have concrete ideas for the annual target planning about what you want to do in the following twelve months – e.g. the innovative project, the oversea assignment or the advertising tour in a neighboring country. The boss has unfortunately different plans – e.g. administrating the customer data, preparing the move into a new location and the revision of internal documents. Besides the wide area of compromises, there are always at least three alternatives that result from your desires and the proposals of the boss.

Which basic option do you have?

1. I manage to convince my boss.
   It seems unfair that the superior does not assign the desired tasks to you. It is perhaps only because of the fact that he does not know your ambitions. As long as you do not try to convey your own wishes comprehensibly, you cannot expect that these come true. Clarify the three reasons, why exactly you are the right person for the innovative project. Show your abilities that qualify you for the assignment overseas. This includes for example the mastery of foreign languages or personal experiences in the country of destination. Put these arguments into the balance, if you want to go on an advertising tour in the neighboring country. Convey your ambitions in such a way that the superior understands the future benefits that he will achieve as soon as he gives you the task. Only if your point of view is known, you can expect that the boss acts accordingly. Make efforts to regularly demonstrate your strengths. Then your desired door will open.
2. I change my expectations.
   At best you adapt. Finally we are the ones that have full control of ourselves. However, this does not mean that you let yourself control by somebody else and pass the choice over your own fate to other people. But some tasks are more attractive, than they seem at first sight. The experiences that you can make, when you administrate the customer data, can by far exceed the superficially missing fun of the innovative project. Also the new contacts that result from the relocation can bring in the long run more advantages than the assignment overseas. The general knowledge that you acquire by revising the internal documents, exceeds the insights that you can collect with the marketing tour. At first sight you apparently give something up. In fact, you win valuable new options by adjusting the own expectations.
3. I change the job.
   The first two points represent the two poles black and white. But life happens in the grey area between the two. However, as soon as you find no compromise that appeal to you AND your boss, you still have the third alternative – you separate. Take your needs seriously. If you do not convince your boss and you are not convinced by any of the offered alternatives, then you may be in the wrong place. You will quickly notice that you get considerably farther, when you search consequently for a new challenge. Do not hesitate to change the job, when you find something else that pleases you. You do yourself AND your boss a favor, if you untangle the unsolvable knot.

Bottom line: If both parties can not give up their point of view and ‘both-and’ is not possible, there is still the third alternative. You can avoid the unsolvable decision, by simply separating. The frustration that evolves, if you avoid the third alternative only because you postpone it, the damage will be bigger than the change that you have to face.