Have you ever been hit over the head with the fact that something you have been doing for many years, a long cherished assumption about human nature, may be wrong? Or equally as alarming, that how you do a basic activity is incorrect?
Such was my day yesterday, when I was confronted by the fact that how I have managed in the past may be completely and utterly wrong. The facts themselves are irrelevant - the outcome is that for the second time in less than six months, basic assumptions about people and how I am as a manager are in question.
One incident (in anything) is a fluke, something that may have just happened. Two incidents are an indication that there may actually be something there - and it starts with me.
Starts with me? Yes. As Splinter (that great dispenser of wisdom in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) says, "There are no excuses when you are the leader". A failure of something which is in my area of purview is ultimately a failure of myself to do something.
What does all of this means? I fear it means that the belief I have functioned under for years - indeed very style of dealing with people - is wrong. That style may very well need to change. And by changing the style, I will have to change myself.
I've had hints of this lately, of course - hints in other areas of my life, hints around how I react and act in the work environment. Hints that things which I don't necessarily acknowledge as effective but at least as my "style" are not useful.
In a way it saddens me deeply. What I think it ends up leaving is a me that I'm not going to like very much, a me that is far less personal and far more business-like in my day to day work life - if you will, a person who is very different than the person I feel myself to be.
The odd part is that for once I know what the changes have to be - not just changes in actions and attitudes, but changes in attention. Changes in knowingly committing my knowledge to a tight circle of things which in a relatively short time will be meaningless.
In a very real way, a large part of me has to change - drastically change - in the next few weeks to become that which it apparently has to become to be in the work world I am in.
The question is, will I recognize the person on the other side?
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