I was impressed today by a colleague - a member of my client team who greatly outranks me. He sent me a note with a request. I had a couple of questions and emailed him a note to that effect saying I'd come find him to talk to him later in the day, as I knew he was busy prepping for a meeting. (I'd already looked for him and he wasn't around.)
Ten minutes later he was in my office. "You had a question?"
There are all sorts of little power plays that take place in daily interactions in the workspace. Who sits where in the room, on what side of the desk, who waits for who, and definitely, who comes to who's office. Higher ups can summon common folk. "Please see me."
I've never held rank. I always find people and respond to summons. It rose to my awareness a few weeks ago when another colleague and I were talking but she had to go. "Can we work on this later?" "Sure," I said. "I'll come find you."
"No, I'll find you," she said. I was mildly humbled.
I was mildly humbled again today when this other colleague came to find me to respond to my question. Funny how just little things like that make a difference. At least to me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
To me this epitomizes the wrongness (the fractal wrongness, even) of our experience at a certain previous employer who shall go unnamed. The subtle power plays were always in effect there. Senior people always asked juniors to come see them in their office - rarely did they venture out to the cube farm for any reason. Meetings were always scheduled with a bias towards the senior person's calendar, with little or no recognition of impact on junior people. Ideas were always sucked upwards to be judged and never passed downwards for review. Leadership functions were kept locked at the highest level possible in every case, with even mundane daily management tasks normally taken on by Directors, completely bypassing management. etc etc etc. the examples go on.
Contrast this with our new employers (your siutation sounds similar to mine), where senior people routinely come to their employee's desks, responsibility is devolved to lower levels on a regular basis, and at least some managers generally act as though their employee's well-being and empowerment comes before their own.
Post a Comment