Eric’s Blog

The Problem

The people at work have been abusing my patience for far too long and I’m completely over it.

The most recent offense culminated in an hour-long meeting yesterday where I sat and patiently listened to everyone at the table tell me about all the problems they have at work and not owning a single thing for themselves. They were blaming everyone else and every other thing they could.

I didn’t realize this at the time, I was too busy listening to all their problems. I went home feeling like a piece of crap because everyone had load-shed their emotional baggage onto my shoulders. I had a couple of beers, vented to the missus, and woke up the next day with the realization that there were only one or two actionable items on their list of things that were disrupting group cohesion and preventing job satisfaction.

How I normally deal with things

Normally, I would sit and stew over how all these problems were somehow my fault. I tend to take other people’s crap, internalize it, and somehow believe that all their problems are my fault. I don’t know what changed, but I’ve decided that I’m not going to be someone else’s doormat/punching bag/storage shed/etc.

This morning, I woke up with renewed vigor and the determination to make things right. I’m smart enough to realize that I can’ just swing the pendulum from one extreme to the other. I can’t go from taking everyone else’s crap to taking no crap off of anyone and steamrolling people along the way as I go. Instead, I decided to start looking into the complaints I’d received the other day.

Some of the complaints

One complaint was that my people spend all their time in meetings. So I started investigating. I made a spreadsheet of all the meetings, the duration of those meetings, along with the frequency and who needed to attend the meetings. When it was all said and done, I calculated that this group of people spent 27-29% of their working hours in the course of a month were spent in meetings. Not even a third of their time! If it had been closer to 50%, I would have agreed that we had a problem, but not less than one-third. This even includes one hour per week for the individuals to go to the gym and work out.

Instead of sending out my calculations and telling everyone how wrong they were, I sent out the excel spreadsheet and asked everyone if the information on it (I left off my calculations) if it was accurate. By the time I left work this afternoon, only one person had responded and said yes, the information was accurate. I think I’ll wait until next week and see how many other people write back telling me the data is accurate or not before I tell them what my calculations have shown.

More importantly than how much time people spend in meetings, I started thinking about what people are doing in meetings. At the end of a meeting, we always go around the table and ask everyone one-by-one if they have anything for the good of the group or the organization. Everyone in this particular group of people always answers with the same response, “Nothing for the group”.

Earlier that day, we had a meeting and someone brought up the idea of moving a meeting to the left to get more people to attend. I was taking notes at the time and only paying half-attention, but I thought to myself, “Isn’t that at the same time as another meeting we already have?” I wasn’t sure, but I made a note to check the schedule and deconflict any schedule issues. Back at the gripe session, I asked if it was a conflict and one of my special-cases said it was; he had been at the meeting earlier but hadn’t said a word and when asked, he replied with, “nothing for the group”.

“Dude!” I exclaimed, “Why didn’t you say something at the earlier meeting?”

“It’s not my program” was his reply.

The thing that ticks me off is the fact that he had answers, but didn’t provide any useful, constructive input because it wasn’t his program. All of these individuals can walk into a leader’s office and provide immediate feedback on what is wrong and a plan on how to fix it. Any single one of the leaders on the job would take that seriously and likely implement their plan immediately.

Gaslighted

Another problem that was brought up occurred to me when I asked about this double-scheduled meeting and was told that a group within the command could attend any meeting they wanted to and received credit for it, but not everyone could do the same thing. The problem with this is that a small group has already broken the trust of the command. If they can break the trust of the command and still be allowed to set their schedule, why can’t we do that for the people who haven’t broken our trust?

It turns out, I was being gaslighted. Or at least, that’s what I felt like was happening. That’s when someone tells you a lie but pretends it’s true to make you second guess yourself and believe you were wrong. I’m the first person on the planet to admit when I’m wrong. I make mistakes all the time, but, I hadn’t read the policy in the last 15 minutes, so I wasn’t sure if what I was being told was true or not. I decided to go with it, against my gut, and find the answer after the fact.

As it turns out, I was correct. I had the answer in an archived email from a month ago and sent the information out to my group directing them to inform the troops of the policy change.

So now what?

Do I pull them all back together and tell them how screwed up they all are? Do I just let the Commanding Officer blast them like he’s probably going to anyway? Do I do nothing, just roll over and take it? No. I’m not going to do any of those things. As I stated earlier, I’m not going to swing the pendulum from one extreme to the other side. That would be bad and wind up leaving everyone confused and unsure of where they stand. Not that they don’t deserve it.

What I’m going to do is get hard. I’m going to stop being everyone’s friend/sounding board/grandpa, and I’m going to start toughening up. When something doesn’t feel right, I’m going to ask them to prove it to me. The burden of proof should be on them, not on me. When they tell me that they spend all their time in meetings, I’m going to ask them what inputs they’re providing at those meetings. When they say they’re not providing any inputs at those meetings because meetings are stupid and don’t involve them, then I’m going to remind them why they’re at those meetings; that they’re there for the command, and the Sailors, not for themselves. I’m going to remind them of the Chief Petty Officer Creed and Pledge. I’m going to ask them if they read Laying the Keel and if they remember the enlistment oath.

When people start questioning my authority, I’m going to remind them that I’m the Master Chief and they’re not. If they keep complaining about things, then I’m going to ask them what they’ve done to fix it and if they’re an E-7 or a Chief. (It’s really bad to call a Chief an E-7, almost like a slap in the face or a gut-punch).

I’m going to have a standard, and I’m not going to allow anyone to come in under that standard. Anyone who thinks they’ll slide under my RADAR will have another think coming to them.

Final thoughts

I hate having difficult conversations with people, I get nervous every…single…time I have to do it. I try to play things out in my mind, what will I say if they say this? How will I react if they do that? Pre-planned responses are so much easier than thinking on your feet and reacting to something or someone real-time, but things rarely ever happen in real life the way they happen in my imagination.

I hate being a hard-ass, but I don’t see any other way out at this point. If I keep doing the same things that I have been doing, I’ll wind up working myself to death or driving myself crazy. I’m going to start asking people who walk into my office with a problem, “what have you done to solve that problem?” When their feelings are hurt, I’m going to have to respond with, “sorry, I didn’t realize this was one of those meetings where I had to make you feel good about yourself.”

If you’re still reading this and you have any suggestions, I’m all ears at this point. I’ll follow-up in a week or so and let you know how things are going.