As a little girl, I’d say to my mother that Debbie had invited a few of us girls for a sleepover. She’d say “why would she want YOU there?”
First jobs during college, picking weeds and resurfacing clay tennis courts at a summer resort. I wasn’t allowed to sit on the roller as that was a manly job, just do all the scut work.
After college, I finally got a good and interesting job but my boss was elevated from my job so I got to do all the organizing and writing but when it came to negotiations and deliberations I was not allowed at the party. Trust.
I left him abruptly to go be a lobbyist in NYC. My boss took my words and said “Go downtown, I’ll have your testimony before you have to go on.” Yes, she did, changing three or four words and commandeering a car to get her there usually about a minute before I spoke, thus I never got to see the changes.
When employers do not train their employees to do what is needed to get the job done, that does a disservice to both. When employees are asked to do certain things to make things right and do them, an employer must reconsider their status if they’ve been downgraded.
I’ve been a boss and have also created and managed many volunteer projects over the years. I find that honey, not vinegar, is the key. Discussion, sometimes “you could do this better, here’s how to do it and thanks for volunteering.”
One client had a board after events that was called Goods and Betters. It wasn’t what went right and wrong, it was what was good and what we’d need to do better, as in name tags weren’t at the table and had to be gotten from the car.
Teamwork, common goal, benchmarks, praise, trust tend to work better than what I’ve encountered throughout parts of my life. As to a mother telling a kid that no-one would want to play with them, I’m still at a loss and I can’t talk to her about it because she’s gone.
When I was young I allowed some limitations to get the best of me. It took until I was 30 to come into my own as a person. Now I see these young pro athletes and they’re young enough to at least be my sons, if not nearly grandkids. They don’t see limitations, they see opportunities and so do I. Cheers! Dee
Cooking with Dee 