Hello, I blog!
I share all my sporadic and toilet thoughts in here, because I am random like that.
Managing people
I never thought I was someone who’s good with people. I talk a lot, yes. But being mildly extroverted does not mean I’m a natural at dealing with people.
Take me, for example. I’m hypersensitive. I take offense easily. But this also inevitably leads to me worrying too much about offending other people. This is both good and bad.
What’s ironic is despite how I tend to worry about offending people, I still speak my mind. Sometimes, way too liberally. But I often try to structure my sentences in a way that brings my point across without coming across as too rude or harsh. (May not be successful all the time, but at least I try.)
There’s also the occasional time where I become a bit too passionate about what I’m talking about and end up speaking in a highly exaggerated, agitated manner – leading people to think I’m mouthing them off when actually, I’m not.
Then again, that’s because I’m too highly strung about how other people think.
The reason why I’m now watching my interpersonal relationships more closely is my change in career environment.
I’ve been with this startup company since the beginning of the year. I’ve an awesome partner in crime in one of my favourite fields of work which is UX design. But I also have to oversee several fresh faces in the team who are completely new to the startup scene and the tech industry.
Given my perfectionist nature, I wanted everything to be in its place and up to speed at all times and yet give ample room for the freshies to grow.
I never liked micromanagement and dictatorship. I’ve been at the receiving end before at a previous job. I know how it’s like to be belittled. I know how it’s like to be looked down upon. I know how it’s like to simply carry out the desires of others with little room for own input. And I can honestly tell you, the feeling sucks.
So, when it came to my turn to oversee people in a fresh new environment, I didn’t want to make the same mistakes. I don’t want to stifle. I don’t want to belittle. I want to give constructive criticism and yet still make people feel empowered with new knowledge.
It isn’t easy, and I still occasionally feel like I’m stepping on toes.
Like how I occasionally get too animated when trying to provide feedback or constructive criticism. Thankfully, my hypersensitive self tends to pick up hints of annoyance or when a person is getting demoralized – sometimes hints that are not even there – allowing me to react accordingly. But I still feel bad afterward.
I want to be the type of person that offers gentle yet firm guidance and support.
It ain’t easy. Because human nature causes us to constantly want to be one-up above others. But it crushes, disheartens and discourages. And after what I’ve been through before, damn right I don’t want that to happen to anyone.
Managing people can feel like rocket science. But I’m willing to invest time and energy in this kind of rocket science. The gains from having positive team morale is absolutely priceless.
Mystery of the missing cloth – a happy ending
Remember the missing piece of white cloth I was griping about in my previous post?
Well, yes. That was more than two weeks ago. And as of three days before today, I was still a wreck, wondering where that dratted piece of cloth was because I really wanted to sew my pants. And this was after nearly two weeks of checking every single corner of my room. (Nope, still no white cloth.)
Two days, I came home from work … and found the white cloth sitting on my desk.
When I say sitting on my desk, I really mean sitting on my desk. In full view.
So, obviously someone has found it and placed it there. But who … ? And where … ? So, I decided to ask the family maid, since she usually cleans up some stuff in my room when I’m out.
Well, she said she found it behind the boxes stacked by my window. But as far as I know, the cloth had always been sitting on my desk .. until the day it went missing, that is.
“How did it get there?” I pressed. She became a little evasive, hem and hawing in her responses.
Both parents were standing nearby and watching this little exchange with barely concealed grins. By then, all three of us knew … the family maid must have accidentally misplaced the cloth, dropping it in a completely random spot while she went about doing her cleaning (and unfortunately, also yakking on the phone at the same time).
How did we know? Because the same thing happened with my dad’s car keys last week. The object will suddenly go mysteriously missing … and then end up in some random spot not touched by any one of us.
Now, the white cloth is placed neatly on the shelf next to my desk, in full view (and extremely accessible) to me when I want to use it.
Unfortunately, I no longer feel like sewing my pants now. :(
Sidenote: I also mentioned in the earlier post that I decluttered my desk before discovering the cloth was missing. Well, honestly – I can’t remember whether I saw the cloth there when I was clearing my desk either. So what’s worse than one absent-minded person? Two absent-minded people. :/
It does not pay to be neat but forgetful
Two weeks ago, I bought about a foot worth of white cloth as I had a pair of jeans I wanted to patch.
However, I was way too busy at that time and left that folded piece of white cloth somewhere on my desk. Directly within sight, so that I’d remember to fix my jeans.
A few days later, my neat freak streak got the better of me and I decided to declutter my desk. I ended up placing the white cloth somewhere else in my room.
Now, I want to fix my jeans and have no freaking clue where the cloth is, despite racking my brains for almost three days.
FML. Welcome to my world.
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