Boss Lady

Today I was dreading my monthly meeting with my BossLady (BL). I'm fairly good at what I do and I take a lot of pride in how I do my job. But this has not been my year. The type of work that has crossed my desk has been idiotically complicated, required a lot of research beyond the norm, and heavily focused in an area that is by far my biggest weakness. I can run circles around people in the areas I'm fully competent in. But this one area has been the bane of my work existence. My work-items drag toward resolution and I'm not confident of my results. I tend to be overly critical and analytical in my research. But I'm like that because people's money is at stake and I believe I owe it to them to be thorough; whether they get a positive or negative outcome.

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I swamped with these hateful work-items. So I took my labored ass into my meeting to have a *Thomas sucks and I need help* session. Gawd, I hate asking for help and/or understanding or guidance about my own performance. Usually my monthly meets take all of 5 minutes. My new BL has been in her position for 4 months now. Each of my meetings has been 45 minutes or more since she came on board. She has a brilliant mind. Clearly she thinks much faster than I do and I don't know how she does it. But she's patient to listen to my issues and guide me where I need to be. This is her first time as a manager and so far she is doing a wonderful job. As task oriented as she is, she has the time to stop and wrap her head around issues at a moments notice and completely "get it".

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I left today's meeting with my pile of work and an action plan. I left the meeting feeling that I had been heard and understood. I even suggested a solution to a team process that I had been offering up for the past three years that always considered unnecessary. My suggestion offered up a more fair distribution of work and work-types that will balance ownership. She totally bought into the concept. It's such an easy concept to administer. But it's so very much going to tick off my remaining colleague-bitch. (yeah maybe that was unnecessary but it's true.)

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So Thomas, was the entire day a success? Hail no!