It’s a cold Friday night and I’m ready for bed (such a party animal) but I didn’t want to miss blogging today. Feeling uninspired and have nothing to blog about, or so it seems, so I had a look around at what others are blogging about, to try to spark something.
Interesting discussions are happening over at the CURTIS blog, and tonight’s post made me think: What is the best tip you can give a LIS student looking to enter the workforce?
Friday night after a very busy week at work is probably not the time to be trying to think of words of wisdom to impart to anyone. The post did make me ponder what I’ve been doing at work, and how things have been going. Lots is happening at MPOW* and it’s a busy and exciting time and I’m actually realising how much more I have to learn, and keep learning, about being a senior manager at my library.
I don’t mean learning new skills around technology. I’m thinking about how I work with other people, and the skills it takes to figure out why people do what they do, what motivates them, and how they react to challenges and problems and so forth. It’s both fascinating (when you can step back enough to observe and listen), and frightening (because people can be so complicated and difficult). Oh, and amusing, infuriating, confusing, frustrating, interesting, confounding, amazing… On top of all that, everything around us is constantly changing – and changing fast – so it can be hard to keep up with it all.
I’m lucky to be in a pretty supportive workplace, though, and I think my colleagues and I are figuring out ways to work with each other that are honest and trusting. I’m lucky that they will tell me if I do something stupid or graceless (sigh). All I have to do is take it on board, apologise and acknowledge and learn from it, without letting the impulse to beat myself up (I fucked up, what a terrible human being I am) about it take over. (If that makes sense.) And then think: “How can I do this better next time?”
So I don’t have any tips to share today. All I can say is, don’t close yourself off to learning – especially about yourself and what makes you tick.
*MPOW stands for My Place Of Work. The term was coined by Karen Schneider.
4 Comments
hey @flexnib,
Every day I think I have nothing to blog about, and yet when I set myself the time to sit down and think, I always find something from my day worth writing about. I love that your challenge allows me this reflection space.
I agree with you that my current area of most personal growth is in people management. I think it is an area that has so much capacity when you get it right; and an area that is the most frustrating, blamestorming and fluid when it doesn’t gel.
I also work with a wonderful team of people who speak truth directly, regardless of whether I may look like I want to hear it. Without these colleagues I would not feel so able to try new techniques, take risks and retry when I fail.
Something that is really helping me stop beating myself up is an interview I heard with Paul Gilbert (head of the Mental Health Research Unit as well as Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Derby) through a recent program called Mindfullness in May. He studies compassion. He talked about how they found that people who are critical of others are also internally critical. Using a kinder tone and voice in your head about others, helps you do the same for yourself. As a Judgement Queen myself, I’ve been trying this and it has really helped lessen my inner critic; thus reducing my second guessing and blaming cycle. Will try and do a post on this soon.
Best of luck with your personal growth too x
I always try to understand why people do what they do. I’m slowly coming to the realisation that this is not always a helpful approach…
There is always so much more to learn in this space. I’m so grateful to work somewhere that provides a lot of high quality internal training for new (and newish) managers. I also have a supportive boss and one or two colleagues that I learn from by observing (and from them telling me, in a constructive way, when I might have done something better). A colleague from another institution also gives me very good advice and support over a beer every few months, which is great. I still find dealing with people a struggle though and sometimes I think I understand people less the longer I work with them, not more! I really like Ruth’s tip about not judging people (or yourself) too harshly – sound advice. All we can do is try as hard as we can and be open to learning more and improving over time. I have at least another 25 years of worklife yet, so I am sure I will get the hang of it eventually 🙂
You’re not alone, Sam – dealing with people is the hardest part of the manager’s job! I find that being open to learning, improving over time, and apologising for/owning your mistakes works well 🙂