While this month brought with it a new transition, I was ready to disown it. I learned in the first week of a new position that when people talk, which you cannot avoid because we all do it, things get majorly misconstrued in the chain of communication. The days of playing Telephone after a heated game of Duck-Duck-Goose when you're five still happens but on a different level. In this case, the level of career orientation.
I said something one way, someone heard it in their ear another way, and it stung the wrong person with another ear in an even more wrong way who heard it secondhand. This caused a chain reaction of events that affected my whole week, and frankly had me on pins and needles on how my dynamic with some individuals would be for the next year.
After many (and I mean many) discussions and meetings, everything has been smoothed over, so my position and I are now okay. However anxious I was about the messages that got delivered, I will say that I learned much from it. One thing I learned was that people need a lot of coaching in order to shift their thinking. When things change, and there are many transitions happening, we get blocked by old, and maybe even antiquated, ways of thinking. It takes a lot of clarity and drawing the big picture in detail in order for the purpose of the transition and what it means to get across. Next, I learned to mind my p's and q's. Something that I thought was harmless to say got seen in a light I didn't imagine. Not that I said anything wrong, it's just that, again, it hit someone's ear the wrong way. I guess you just never know that even something simple will hit someone like a ton of bricks. Lastly, I learned news travels fast. Well that's not news, but a good and cold reality reminder.
Should be an interesting year, the first week was a blast...not.
