Thoughts On A Week Of Work

I think I am finally caught up on all of your comments.  As always, thank you for your thoughtful comments as well as making the time to make them.  I always enjoy thinking and responding to them.

I have completed my first full week of work back.  To be frank with you, it was a tough week.

I am not sure where the trajectory started to fall - maybe Tuesday, certainly Wednesday.  You will know the feeling if you have ever experienced it, the slow and complete descent into a sense that no matter what you do, it is not right. It was never right.  Just event after event that do not seem to be going the way they should have gone.

The two options, of course, are that either I am really that bad or things are simply seeming that bad because for a week, I was not here to manage them.  It is probably a combination of the two, frankly.

Which has me asking the next question, a question that has been going through my head for months now:  Am I now a good fit for the position?

Over the past 3.5 years, we have grown 10x from our original size ( I now manage a department that has more people than the entire company had when I started).  I have continued to move "up"; the question is if moving up has really continued to be the best fit for the company and me.

Some of it - truly - is me and a paucity of certain skills that I simply need to attain, the two greatest of these being clearer (much clearer) communication and a much more hands on management style than I have used in the past.  But some of it is surely the fact that at heart, I am a relationship centered anti-authoritarian in the midst of a decreasingly relational position which needs to have more oversight to make sure that things get done.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I was as unhappy this week as I have ever been.

It makes me think of my material grandfather.  He worked at the same company for almost 40 years.  I remember him as being loving but a little gruff and hard to communicate with.  When he died, we were going through his things and found postcards from 30 years previous that none of us grandchildren recognized as being written by him because they were, well, funny.  Humorous.  Almost not written by the same man we remembered.

My grandfather graduated in 1929, just before the Great Depression, and I am sure was glad to have a job through it (their experience was very different than my Father's parents) - and at that time, if you had a job, you kept it.  But it does make me wonder how he changed over the years as he was on that job.  What did he sacrifice?   What did he have to become?   Did he ever regret it?

Maybe next week will be better (I certainly hope so!). But it does leave the lingering question:  if to continue to excel in this job I have to become something I am not, is it truly worth it?