Weeknote for week commencing Monday 21 September 2020
Talking to someone this week they mentioned how at the moment they find it — and I quote — “nerve wracking” getting feedback to their work. Here’s a chat between two “senior”, “experienced” people. Hey, with all that experience you’d think they’d been through it all, the good and the not good, the smooth and the rough, becasuse that that’s what being experienced is, eh!
Up front here I find this friend an incredibly level headed person, who always has the time to explain what they are going to do, does good work consistently and happy again to talk through what they have done. A real lead by example by doing type of person.
My friend explained further that they felt they couldn’t have a healthy conversation about their work with their current team members, “tear down” sessions felt verging on personal attacks, tear downs on the person’s ways of working. “Who is wrong here: Me or the team?”
I felt a little at unease. I’d started this discussion by briefly sharing with my friend a workshop I’d done recently, the prep I did — what tasks, who I did the prep with — and actually running the workshop and setting up some actions off the workshop. The workshop was full of sharing, listening, understanding, constructive and helpful discussion circling back to sharing and listening. It felt respectful, people working with other people who have a whole heap of appropriate experience in the workshop topic. It felt grown up, mature.
My friend and I worked through what they could do, see if the tone within their team could be better, for them and the work the team was doing.
Afterwards the conversation made me reflect on tone, how we set things up and how we go about doing stuff, the lines between understanding and dismissiveness, confidence and arrogance, encouraging and bullying, and so so many other pairings. It made think about a couple of things I am involved with where the tone could be better. I will work on that.
This post tagged with:
weeknotes,
2020 weeknotes