The power of the mind to delude itself into thinking that one’s actions are morally and ethically correct has always amazed me. I’ve never claimed to be a perfect individual, far from it, nor a perfect manager, but I’ve always been able to admit mistakes, learn, heal, and move on with my life a better person and coach in an efficient way, and I rarely care who knows about those mistakes.
I saw good people poisoned by negativity and allow their personal and professional growth to be stunted and corrupted in 2010. It will probably be one of the lasting impacts of the recession, an entire generation embittered by a few rough years. I found a few of those people and helped pull them out, but just as many I know I could have done more for. Maybe it was one more positive email, one more meeting for lunch on me, one more unexpected phone call just to see how things were going.
Ultimately it’s all up to the individual to see their life for what it really is, to recognize and admit to bad decisions and bad attitudes. People have a choice to see the positives in the world around them or to focus on what’s negative, or perhaps just different than what they’re used to. We can explain away bad choices in a way that avoids having to grow indefinitely, but it’s just a convenient form of self-deception.
Perhaps the worst part about managing people is that you can’t let everyone in and experience what the inner workings of a company are really like, even if you trust you them, enjoy their company, even see management potential in them. When something great happens it’s generally a simple matter to communicate it to your team, and transparency is always a positive- “This amazing event happened because of A, B, and C”. But when it’s negative, even poisonous, it gets infinitely more complex. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about human resources laws, privacy laws, and finances in the last few years, for which I am immensely thankful for- but all of which cloud any attempt to lay out lessons learned, to divine some sort of wisdom from an event, or series of events you’d wished never happened. Knowing the truth and not being able to say anything is bad enough, but seeing the truth misrepresented and not being able to say anything is worse.
To tie this ramble all together, it’s always easier to point the finger at something you don’t understand, especially when it’s to save face, and not doing so would mean you’d have to change and accept things about yourself that make you uncomfortable.
