No, that did not happen to me.
I was the one who almost said that to my subordinate. I stress the word ALMOST here. We were in an evaluation session with my Supervisor, and I had to do the 'probing'. For every single question that I asked her, she answered "Because my supervisor did not coach and educate me properly on what I should do". That answer, with this look she had on her face that made me felt like slapping her! Or spit, or both.
I have been very courteous with her, considering she's twice my age. Yes, I respected her still despite the fact that she had been telling awful tales about my boss since the first day I joined the company. I had always listened to her stories because I thought she simply needed someone to pour her heart out. And as much as I hate to admit it, I had for some time believed in her stories. At first. Until her tales got taller and more ridiculous...
Then I decided to view things differently. Give my boss a 'chance' to show who she is. Through my own eyes, ears and heart. And I found that she's not as bad as the stories I heard from the others. (Yes, the entire office has a united opinion about her.) In fact, she could be the only person who is professional in the entire organisation. Well, maybe because of that they call her inhuman HR Head. But despite this stained first impression I had about her, professionally, I found out that she is best mentor anyone could have. Well, at least the best example I could find in the company.
Oh well, back to my earlier story:
I have been giving this particular staff instructions on what she needs to do. Explained to her what I expect her to do. Hell, I even drew formats and tables for reports that I wanted her to prepare. And after every single time she'd say "OK, OK". And most of the time, that's that. No updates, nothing.
I once asked her to help put the staff names in groups of 15 - get the list from HR; name, job level, department; mix people from different departments and levels in each group; put maximum 15 person per group; I want it in a week. Six weeks later, she was shocked when I asked her about the list. Surely, she pretended that she had no idea what I was talking about. And this morning, when I brought that up, she said I did not coach her how to do it!
So imagine how pissed I was. She was really lucky my boss was there. My boss agreed to give her another chance, and asked me to include her or her Secretary everytime I'm going to give instructions to my staff. And get someone to put my instructions on paper. So I have proof that the instructions given are clear. That they will not be able to twist the stories around and say it's my fault.
My God, I have never met anyone more difficult in my 28 years of life. Not even when I had to coordinate operations support for 8,000 people in my previous company. And to actually have over 100 of them in one place... Honestly, I have no words to describe how terrible this is. And how much I respect my boss for being able to go through with this longer than I do. Seriously, if it were not because of this exchange programme that I'm in, I would have resigned months ago. But I'm glad to know there's someone I can really turn to for advice and support. Although her approach is crude in many ways.
This reminds me of what people told me earlier:
- You're only 28 and you're already experiencing this. You don't know how lucky you are; you're going to be a wonderful leader at much younger age than most great leaders ever lived!
- If you go through the shittiest experience now, once this is over, there's not going to be any problems that you can't stand. Treat this as a training ground, physically, mentally and emotionally.
These two 'words of wisdom' were shared during the past couple of months, when I thought things were already bad. But that was before this morning's incident.
So now I guess I have three people to thank - my boss and the two wise men who uttered those words.
And one person to prove my worth - myself.
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