Hah. I think you need to read the front page of this blog again. The bit about personal development being hard work. I dunno how you even got in through the front door to here without reading that. Perhaps you need to reevaluate whether you fit in the "personal development for smart people" bit, too.
(Some practice for you :P I hope it wasn't too mean)
Seriously though, you seem to have coloured your options very black and white. It's either everything thinks you're a bitchy boss or no one does. You can be seen as an assertive manager to some people. There's many options there.
You can also look at it this way: Even though these people are talking at you and they appear to be talking about you, they're really reacting to their mental model of who you really are, of which they've only seen a small part. We all do that, we react to our models/maps of how things are. But as NLP folks will tell you, the map and terrain are two completely different things. In fact, in their minds you (a massively complicated human being) has been compressed into "the woman who fired me". They don't even care about you, you just happen to be there. If there had been someone else there who'd done that, they'd react the same way. So, for me, recognizing that people are often just reacting to their ideas and perceptions and not me-me personally has helped me to let go of what they think.
Another thing, completely and totally accept that you will piss off some people. It's absolutely inevitable. Again, this will have almost nothing to do with you and almost everything to do with the other person. You're reacting to criticism in a specific way, based on what you think it means. Here it sounds like it means, "x doesn't like me very much. They hate me. Does that mean I'm not likable in general, cause they don't like me? Maybe I'm not just not a very likable person." And it doesn't have to mean any of that stuff, it just means that this person is angry that you're not giving them what they've gotten used to. I'd say they're not taking responsibility for their life. They haven't gone, "yea, you know, she's right. My performance has been crap. Maybe I can fix it and maybe even get this job back" but instead they choose to react with anger and just blame you. Are you going to take responsibility for their unwillingness to take responsibility?
I was once chewed out for being too happy.
http://www.mind-manual.com/blog/inde...ything-you-do/
BTW, I dunno what you business is, but have you considered reading 4-Hour Workweek? It talks quite a bit about outsourcing and "eliminating" employees. Dan Kennedy's work is also pretty high impact. I was just reading Scott Allen over at about.com today and he said that unless you've got a lot of employees and can attract and afford really good managers, employees are usually massive headaches. I also found Instant Income to be somewhat helpful.
In the short term, either find someone who can dish out bad news or find/invent some sort of higher authority that you are deferring to (board of directors, father, etc). This may make it easier for you to tell epople off by saying it's someone else's wishes and you're just the messenger.