Sometimes you come to a point where you question yourself, your nature, what you are as a person. Those are times I look forward to a long run to get these answers.
Recently, I have heard a lot of feedback from some close people that my nature is very "fake", "drama queen". This did hurt initially but I did what I learned about how to deal with feedback. The most successful people are people who keep their critics very close to them. So, I decided to think about when I might have appeared "fake" or might have appeared to be a "drama queen".
We have an exercise at Cisco, where we get 360 degrees feedback from your team members, your boss, and the other people you work with through the year. One feedback from my boss of 3+ years was "She is very easy to work with, she says what she means - you can read her like a book". This was before the exact opposite feedback I got - where I was called "fake".
I was at crossroads - what was I doing in my personal life that was so "fake" that I was not doing in my professional life.
When I was offered a job out of college, my dad told me two things that I am still working on today:
1. You have to partition your brain into two zones - one for your personal life, and the other for your
professional life.
2. This was specific to me - he said - you get the big picture very well, focus on doing well at the details.
Very simple and concise.
I have tried very hard to work on both these points - I think I focussed more 1, after I experienced a project being cancelled at Cisco. I realized how easy it was to cancel or void the work that was done for 2.5 years by 8 engineers in one sentence! At that point I decided, it does not make any sense to spend my evenings or my weekends for Cisco. And I can count on one hand the weekends I have worked since October 2008. After my son was born, number 1 was achieved very easily. There is really no time or energy to focus on work after you get home. I am still working on number 2 and slowly I am getting better.
Back to the "fake" comment. As I ran, I tried to think how might I have been "fake" in my personal life. One thing that I realized - just as my peers can read me as a book - the same might be happening in my personal life too except one thing. In my personal life, I say things that are in my mind, I probably say things too early, and do not give too much thought to them. Many times, they might be very random, and might not mean much - more like a brain storming session. At work, you warn your co-workers that you are brain storming - you don't do such things in your personal life. That can cause people close to me to misunderstand me. I realized I need to think through all the cases before saying something that I want to do and not be a complete impromptu person.
Being an engineer in my professional life, that never happens - when you are solving a problem - you consider a lot of pros and cons of the solution that you have in your mind, and then when you have everything together, you discuss this, and propose it to your peers.
As I looped around the neighborhood through my run, I found the answer staring right at me - I have to use more of my professional skills in my personal life. Think more, analyze more, and then speak.
I could see the change in my stride after I realized what I should be doing. That is what I like about running - it gives me insight and solutions to problems that I might be going through in my life. And I realized, I have a place where I can be impromptu, can utter things that will not hurt anybody, where I can talk my thoughts through - and that is during my run, and nobody but my run will know. And when I have refined my thoughts, I can talk to people involved. Amen!
It has now received a very sacred status in my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment