Unfettered Blather

I had a conversation with a co-worker today that I thought might be interesting for people in management out there, or just for employees who are ever having to deal with a manager.

On my last project, which was managed by the consulting firm I work for, I had a great project manager. I would have to severely digress from my intended purpose to go into detail why, but I was truly impressed by this guy.

Sometime in late 2004 I had a series of personal mishaps and circumstances that were beginning to become of great concern to me. It was really just a series of little things. Car problems, my computer went down hard at work, a sudden rash of illness at the house, plus I was taking a good bit of time off to take care of things like getting new tires or taking care of a few things around the house as well as personal matters. Now, one of the reasons why I began looking after my household all of a sudden was because my contract was set to expire at the end of the year and I was likely going to be put on a travel assignment. Faced with the prospect of no longer being around the house on a daily basis, I put some extra effort into getting some things done.

In December of that year I had a sit down with my project manager to go over my latest project appraisal. It was generally positive and fairly reflective of the effort I try to put into a project. The project manager then wanted to talk about all the extra time I had taken lately and how it seemed like none of it was really my fault but he had some concerns. He said he would have difficultly recommending me for a travel assignment due to my constant distractions by my family. He had concerns and he wanted to address them with me. He also noted, without me having to point it out, that I had always finished all of my work and met every assignment and said there wasn’t anyone better at getting from Point A to Point B on an assignment once I had all the details, though he mentioned I should get better about getting all the details up front.

We had a very frank discussion where I pointed out that because I was anticipating travel I was trying to take care of things at my house and that was the source of the distraction. Yes I had a run of bad luck there, but I had also risen to the challenge and made sure everything was taken care of. The conversation went on until all of his concerns were put to rest. You see, we simply talked things out. The good part was that I suspected that the events in my life had not gone unnoticed, and by having a discussion it proved what his measure was. At the same time, had those concerns not been discussed, then they would have led to friction and more problems. Instead of reaching a mutual understanding, my manager may have just harbored some reservations about me. The plus side is that later he would be a sponsor for both a progression early in 2005 and a promotion later that same year.

The problem when we don’t have both sides of the story is that one side may have misconceptions because they have only their own observations to draw from. On the other hand, I have had a similar situation occur before, which made me somewhat reluctant to have this talk, where a manager from a previous job and I had a sit down and the manager in question didn’t really listen or do anything about my concerns. I often receive high marks on appraisals for my independent work ability, but to be honest that comes from a reluctance to approach management for fear that the issue will just be complicated.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.