It may have sounded like anger; actually it was just disappointment

Two people have remarked that a previous blog post about my current job coming to an end sounded ‘angry’ (or made me sound angry). I’m not surprised because sometimes it’s easy to think any criticism or confrontational commentary is anger.

Words can sound angry when you read them in your head, but wouldn’t sound angry if the person said them because far more is conveyed in the tone of voice we use than in the actual words we use. If you heard me saying those things you’d know I wasn’t particularly angry.

That’s not to say there weren’t times when I felt angry. Of course I did. It’s hard to experience a redundancy process – even one you welcome because you have another job to go to – and not feel angry sometimes.

It’s hard not to feel angry when you’re told that the financial crisis has been brewing for over six months. Especially if during those six months one of your jobs was to make sure the Chief Execs expansionist vision statement was turned into posters to put up around the building.

What exactly are you meant to make of that?

It’s hard when you know that people have gotten in touch to say how much the things you’ve worked on have helped them, but then it seems your job is going because only ‘frontline’ jobs are staying. I think my job was frontline. Communicating the mission of our organisation, and providing useful material to the public. Raising funds. Promoting activities.

In what way aren’t those frontline?

And it’s just plain irritating when you ask who you should hand stuff over to and you’re made to feel like you’re being a troublemaker for asking the questions. I genuinely wanted to know who to give things to. In the end I had to make educated guesses.

When people don’t seem to know who will be responsible for the bits of your job that are going to carry on, it does make you wonder how well thought through the plans are.

Is all I’m saying.

It also doesn’t help when you’re in a meeting with a project manager who is on the verge of tears because of the stress. This is someone who is staying and is scared and confused at the prospect. I had to reassure her that things were going to be okay, even though I had no real conviction that they would.

Should it be the responsibility of the people leaving to reassure those who are staying in employment that everything is going to be okay?

And I realise you, dear blog reader, may be reading all these unanswerable rhetorical questions and be thinking ‘Man, he sounds angry!’ But believe me I’m not. I’ve quite literally moved on – into a job where I am both wanted and needed. My first week in the new job saw me hit the ground running with no shortage of urgent projects to sink my teeth into.

I don’t have time to be angry. What I do feel is disappointment.

The thing I’ve said to many people is I never expected to leave my previous job that way. Maybe to move on in a halo of glory, with well wishes and cries of ‘We’ll miss you’. Or even to be thrown out of the building and have the door-codes changed behind me. But never to go like that, as one of over 30 people, and to have my team just dissolved, with no one to replace us, or to take up the baton and promise to maintain the high standards we reached.

I think the greatest cause of my disappointment through all this is the recognition that much of what we worked for is going to be lost. And I can't shake the sense that it's because what we did wasn’t recognised and valued in the first place.

Summarising my career change of direction in just one picture

I've said before that I've been shredding six years' worth of notes. I've also put out reams of paper for recycling. Ultimately more of what I've done will end up being pulped than read, I'm sure.

Here's the proof:

Breaking out of the Birkman box

I have been sorting out my files at work, shredding confidential stuff like the original interview notes from all the interviews that I’ve done over the years. I have a blue recycling bag with the equivalent of about four to five reams of paper stacked in it. In a way it’s profound – my career reduced to recycling. (I made someone mist up when I said that today. Oops.) 

 However, I also went through my personal file, shredding all my staff reviews and old holiday forms and stuff. It was interesting to rediscover documents relating to the previous massive restructuring, with details of the ‘new structure’. Now it’s all fallen over just two years later, the letter I wrote in protest at the changes seemed almost prescient. But I shredded it, so you’ll have to take my word on that. 

 I also shredded my Birkman profile. Birkman has been the bane of many people’s existence in my workplace. The previous CEO believed in it with the kind of passion people usually reserve for veganism or voodoo. 

Apparently Birkman was the sum of all wisdom and defined you in elemental terms. I always had my doubts about that. True there were some helpful things I learned from it, as I’ve learned from all such pop-psych exercises. 

I learned, for example, that when I’m stressed I will exhibit pessimistic, critical behaviour and will want to ‘break social conventions’ (which I presume in a Christian organisation means calling someone who’s being an f-wit an f-wit instead of smiling and giving them the more Christian benefit of the doubt). 

It also noted that I am ‘selectively sociable’, i.e. I only seek out the opinions of a few people who I respect and whose opinions I value. And that has been pretty true, although since having it pointed out to me I have tried to seek out opinions from a wider circle of people. This helps me to make sure I don’t just go to the people who are going to say what I want to hear. 

But what I really hated about Birkman is the way it became an excuse in our organisation, particularly by colour-coding people according to their preferred working styles. 

I’m not disputing the definitions. My ‘blue’ profile is correct – I like to know why; I like strategising; I enjoy being left to self-prioritise my work; I hate micro-management; I thrive when I can ask questions; I like to be asked my opinion. 

The problem is when other people – particularly those marked ‘red’; the “action” people – use their Birkman profile to justify behaving a certain way. ‘I’m red. I like things done now. I don’t want you to raise questions. I just want you to do it. And do it the way I tell you, not a better way.’ 

What I’ve noticed is that a Birkman ‘blue’, such as myself, will look at their profile and a ‘red’s’ profile and say ‘Oh, they’re red. I’d better modify the way I work to enable us to work better together.’ But generally (and note this is generally) a ‘red’ will look at their profile and say ‘This is how people had better act if they want me to respond’, but then never think to modify their behaviour to benefit their co-workers who have been colour-coded differently. 

Now you can call that whatever you want: leadership, clarity of focus, goal-focussed, or whatever. But ultimately it can become just a way of justifying ignorant bullying. ‘I want it my way and screw you and your needs’ would be another way of describing it. 

And that was the weakness of Birkman, as far as I could see. It didn’t actually deal with defective and unhelpful personality traits. It just quantified them and in the process justified them. So, if you wanted to behave like an utter cock, then you could, because that’s how your Birkman profile said you would behave. And who are you to go against the mighty pseudoscience that is Birkman? 

So, shredding my Birkman profile today was cathartic. Hurrah. The labelling menace that is the coloured boxes will no longer dominate my destiny. 

Mind you, I can be as guilty of mis-using Birkman as anyone. In terms of working preferences I have a very low “outdoor” score. That’s why I don’t bother drawing the curtains if I’m first into the office and have never wanted a seat next to window. I’d be happy in a bunker, or at least happier than most. 

It’s also probably why I hate gardening and camping and can’t really be bothered with long walks in the country. So, if you ever wondered why my garden is over-run with Triffids, now you know. It’s all in my Birkman profile.