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Confrontation
Thursday, Mar. 06, 2003 // 9:53 p.m.
CONFRONTATION, To fear, or not to fear?
My last blog I touched briefly on some frustration I was having with work, now I shall explain. I had 8 weeks of a training schedule that was planned out for me by JP the recruiter. During the 5th week I was spending it with Rob the Regional VP (to me a peer, we report to the same person) So my week with him was of course spent at Duke University Hospital. Some major stuff going on as we had to remove the director from the account. The next week I was scheduled to attend a structured week long training at corporate with about 15 other new employees. (this training is given once a quarter.) I was then told very casually by Rob (while he just happened to be walking by the office I was in) that I was pulled from that training to stay and help Duke get staffed. Although, at first I was a bit put back, and disappointed I was fine with it. At that time I was also told I would not be going to Dallas the next week and needed to change my flight. OK no problem, I have now been at Duke for 3 weeks and getting excited about having a travel black out week so I will have some time in the ATL. Yup you guessed it, another nonchalant statement by Rob saying next week I will be coming back to Duke. Frustrated yes, but ok, knowing the next , next week was our Regional Conference at Lake Lanier, with the President and 150 Unit directors, I�m finally going to have a break from Duke��.. well, and this my friends, is when I had it. I was told that I will be leaving that function on Wednesday and be at Duke again Thursday and Friday. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. See now I�m thinking that Rob is maybe just yanking my chain a bit. Let�s see what I can get the new girl to do. On top of that I no longer know my purpose; we hired about 25 people last week. I�m not only frustrated that he keeps changing my schedule, being the HR person, I�m not happy about the way he is going about it, not checking to see what I may have going on or communicating to me what my objective is when I�m there. I was feeling Micro Managed, being given instructions on when & where workerbe me needs to be.
Ok so now the point of all this (hey bare with me people; I haven�t had a long one in a while.) I really thought for a week, what am I going to do, I really don�t want to leave that conference early, and again I don�t know what I am to be doing. I complained for a week, knowing deep down that I was going to have to �confront� him on my frustrations and how I had been feeling and trying to work something else out for next week. You know me, smile and say ok� I think not!! Yesterday came the time of �confrontation,� at first he came back at me with a bit of resistance and defensiveness to the point where I at one time had to say, �Rob, please you keep cutting me off, please may I finish my thoughts?� Then his whole facial expression changed. Our whole conversation changed. He explained things and told me what the objective was and it made complete sense to me. He understood my frustration that he wasn�t taking into account my agenda etc. Now knowing what he wanted me to accomplish I started working on it and we will review on Friday (tomorrow) what is best for next week. And the funny thing is, I�m ok now with going if I need to. He felt bad for not communicating better with me etc. Later that evening he brought it up again about being sorry for cutting me off, that he can be direct, focused etc.. I was like no problem, I�ve heard that direct thing before, and that we both felt that discussion went very well. I think he had feared that because of that I wasn�t liking the new job and maybe I wasn�t at the moment, but I waited a week to talk to him when I could have done it much earlier and it been resolved earlier.
I started to wonder just why are we so afraid to disagree with others and confront things, why is it so scary.
Bye the way, I need to talk to YOU, yeah YOU, the one still reading this long ass thang!!