Week 7, 2024
Another week flies by.
Work
Another week in which I’ve been reminded by colleagues that I’m really good at what I do, that I have knowledge and skills that span disciplines and contexts and they are immensely valuable and transferable. Some days I think I’ve transitioned from being less of a jack of all trades and more of a polymath (clearly on those days in which I have the confidence of a mediocre white man). Reflection: I should be more disciplined in noting down these affirmations to look back on - because I’m choosing to be much bolder professionally and expect the years to come to be filled with situations that could shake my confidence;
Balancing momentum, deliverability and ambition can be challenging sometimes. I’m currently wrangling with the scope of a programme and I can completely understand why we’re being pushed to widen the scope on an engagement. Reflection: we can often kill two or even three birds with one stone - e.g. use an exemplar to both deliver the thing and show new ways of working. But if you don’t yet have good aim maybe don’t be more ambitious than that - and certainly don’t try and kill ten birds with a boulder you can barely lift. Because you won’t hit any birds - and you’ll probably pull a muscle. [no birds were harmed in the writing of this weeknote]
I was in a meeting where a colleague I adore decided to confront an issue in a way that let her feelings known. She was respectful, intentional, and focused on how we would best achieve the outcomes we all shared, and in my mind she handled it perfectly. But washing up after it was clear that she - and many other successful professional women - struggle to believe they won’t be penalised in some way for revealing emotions like frustration, anger, sadness or disappointment in the workplace. Even in workplaces like mine, where “it’s okay to…” (IYKYK). I feel very differently about this - I believe workplace relationships can only be kept healthy if we’re able to communicate how we’re feeling and don’t have to hide our emotions. Our colleagues want a good relationship with us, so if they’ve said or done something that generates a strong emotion in us, the good ones want to know. Emotional regulation skills are important and valuable - the challenge isn’t to pretend that we don’t have feelings, it’s to communicate them when it is beneficial to do so, in a manner acceptable for the context. Reflection: workplace relationships are still relationships. They have cycles of rupture and repair - and the strongest relationships are typically where people have developed the skills and emotional maturity to work through occasional knocks to trust that comes from working closely together. And workplace harmony is only resilient if it’s reached through hard work, not avoidance.
Home
This is the first year my daughters have made me pancakes on Pancake Day. I was comfortable with it - they both now can be trusted (a) to use a frying pan, and (b) to hold their arm under cold water, while they yell for an adult, if they accidentally burn themselves. They didn’t though. Burn themselves. Reflection: this feels a bit like when they were learning to ride a bike and I taught them how to stop, and how to brake safely, before I was willing let go of the back of the saddle. I’ve learned I can more quickly grow my confidence letting go and giving them more autonomy when I focus on making sure they know how to fail more safely. This also feels like a potential strategy for the control freak leaders to get themselves more comfortable loosening the reins in the workplace.
Art class this week was starting a new piece - a mixed media fox that is currently just a blur of colour and patterns. I started off on a scrap canvas, experimenting with mark-making and textures with different tools and paints. This then gave me the confidence to indulge in messy exploration as part of creating my fox. Unlike with my watercolour fish, I’m not trying to recreate a specific painting - it only needs to look fox-ish. And that instantly removes any pressure I’d put on myself, gives me a freedom to play, which had me leaving art class feeling light and joyful. Reflection: in life (as for work) - the less specific a desired outcome is, the more space we have to explore and play and have fun.
My inner world is tumultuous at the moment. I’ve always been someone who thinks and acts rationally in the moment, but then needs time to process things emotionally after the fact. It means I’m calm under pressure. But it also means that if I’ve a lot of change going on in my life, I find myself more introspection that I feel is healthy for me. Reflection: I need some more triggers for asking myself if it’s now time to get out of my own head - and a list of highly engaging activities I can immerse myself in to escape the rumination when it’s time.