Compliment Friday

Building on my last post, I'm realizing I'm really starting to see the position and role I am in and fitting into it.  If my 20s were exploring and my 30s were being comfortable in my skin, I think my 40s are turning into seeing who I am to others and being a leader (or at least finally realizing I am a leader).

Yesterday, I had to go to a project interview at the end of the day.  It was for a new hotel project in Boston and the principal couldn't attend.  So it was me and the project manager.  I was going to speak to sustainability, energy, LEED, etc.  I had no time to prepare and basically was debriefed on our Uber ride over to the interview.  Walking back to the office afterwards, the PM was ecstatic how wonderful it went.  He had been nervous, and although he prepared, he had wanted to prepare more and in the end, he didn't even use what he had prepared. 

I realized that I was more experienced in this role of interviewing than my colleague.  Not only from practice and going to more of these, but also knowing how these things work and understanding the feel and approach.  It's all about how you connect with your audience and a few key things you say.  I've been delegating the interview requests these days, since there are more than I can find time for, but I had said yes to this last minute request because I had just gone through interviews this week as an owner.  I'm on the building committee in my town and we were interviewing an owner's representative.  We had three finalists come in and it was amazing to see how different they were and it was a great example of what not to do and what to do.  So I wanted to take my lessons learned and apply it.  Now we just have to wait to see if we won the project.  The owner has a favorite company that is not us, so we are the underdogs.

And then this morning, I got this lovely email from another former staff of mine - he's in a different department now, after starting in mine.  He had applied to graduate school and was giving me an update of what schools had gotten back to him, and had included this paragraph:

"I can’t thank you enough for helping me throughout the process. The recommendations are a lot of work and a very important part of the application. Beyond that, you’ve taken an active role in my career development from my first days at [company name], through my move to New York, and now with this application. You’ve offered some great advice and were always willing to listen. Thank you for all of your efforts, you have done nothing but open doors for me. I couldn’t have asked for a better manager at the start of my career."

 

I'm finding that if I embrace my role as mentor and role model, all the work interuptions by staff and their demands turn from a negative to a positive and start to feed the battery instead of draining it.  I just heard a term last night, "Reckless Optimism".  It's the idea that it's good "to hope for the best and try your hardest, even though the odds might be against you."  And as I had shared in my little talk this week about time/self management, my constant reminder to myself is to live life with "grace and good humor".