Define: costumes

I had a boss once who told us, "inefficient people cannot pretend forever." This was in relation to someone supervising our team then, and didn't do a very motivating job of it. He would make us go on overtimes without clearly identifying what we needed to do. He would ask us to go to work over the weekends, and we find ourselves sitting with no workload. He would yell at people in the room to the point that some ended up crying on the spot with the shame and humiliation. He would accuse some co-workers of conspiracy and confront them as to "what they're up to". In a nutshell, he was terrible.

After a while, the horrible superior did leave. And so, I held on to that statement the higher boss made, to the point of it being a sort of mantra for me. Whenever I encounter difficult situations brought on by difficult people, I say, "inefficient people cannot pretend forever."

At some point though, you meet different people, and you see a wider view of the world, and you realize, aren't we all in reality, inefficient? A friend of mine likes to use the Peter Principle - you are only promoted to your highest level of incompetency. So, really, all of us are inefficient at some point. All of us reach a stage when we can't pretend anymore.

At which point, we start to actually do the job we should have been doing. We stop pretending to be the "face" of the job we thought we should project. Once we reach the point when we can't pretend anymore, we start thinking, "well, I've done all the things the self-help books, and management modules and MBAs taught me to do, and they don't seem to work." So we bring in ourselves, costumes and perceptions shed off, the self who got hired to do the job in the first place.

So, while that statement is still true to me - inefficient people cannot pretend forever - I don't render it applicable now to just the "difficult" people whom I think make life frustrating. It's a statement that applies to me now. With any given new task, project or job, I have to make sure that my "pretend" phase is short, because that's the phase I'm most inefficient. I'm too busy looking the part, I have little time to actually act the part.

Define: cheerleader

Just a year back, I shudder at the idea of people management. I know myself and I know that it's not my strength. No, I haven't actually tried it full time before, but with all the projects I've handled, taking care of the people involved, motivating them, disciplining them and all that, is just the hardest aspect.

Sooner or later though, everyone needs to go through a "growing up" period. I can't be an individual contributor forever. As I age and take on bigger, decision-making roles in the workplace, I need to work with people and guide them to reach their potential. Sometimes, it includes listening to all their blow-by-blow accounts of how their day went. Sometimes, it means prodding and prying until they open up and help me understand the real challenges they face.

A boss said a few weeks back that a people manager's job is about cheering team members on. I have pictures in my head of myself walking through the office aisles with pom-poms and streamers, yelling "you go!" While it looks fun, in real life, it's exhausting, and I think the reason why that is, is because to be able to cheer someone on, you build up these happy, positive thoughts in you, and transfer them on to someone. With each employee you cheer on, you are a few ounces of positivism less within your own supply. Unfortunately, there's no Gatorade or energy drink you can drink to replenish your own happy, positive thoughts immediately. The only way to replenish them is either by getting them from someone else (i.e. be cheered on yourself), or rest for a while and recover. All these combined - exhausting.

Yesterday, I walked into a room of hopeful individuals in our company who were taking an exam needed for them to be promoted. When I opened the door, all 5 fresh, young faces looked up in a mixture of panic and effort to appear composed.

Here are the people I work for. Here are the reasons why I do what I do. I am no longer young, no longer a part of the twenty-something bunch boasting of high potential. In people management, I am now part of the bigger world whose responsibility is find and develop those twenty-something bunch so they reach their potential. In essence, I need to ensure that these 5 people, and all others like them stay focused on that exam, stay focused on their goals, and more importantly, find those goals early in their career life. For that brief 10 seconds, looking at all those faces, I felt replenished with a whole month's, maybe year's worth, of positivism.

With that, I go back, pick up my pom-poms and do a somersault. Figuratively. I never learned how to perform one.