Life Lessons, Learned the Hard Way

This post will stand in fairly stark contrast to the rest, it's much more personal and hopefully informative from a personal development perspective. This isn't telling you how to live your life nor is it how everyone should, but it's been on my mind this morning and I'd like to share my personal thoughts.

One of my fairly good friends and peers with whom I work with a lot had started a steady downward trend. Call it senioritis, laziness or life, it was affecting my work and my organization's productivity. We're training for our future jobs and working on personal habits as well as building those under us up to replace us and move on, kind of like an internship or any job training. In this situation, the friend was in charge of me. He tasked me with stuff, I reported to him on my progress of the people under me and we should've had a constant dialogue. Imagine manager in charge of team leader leading a couple of other employees in a project.

Well, my manager started off fairly strong, model of fitness, work ethic, compassion and behavior and throughout the semester slowly trended downward. He started talking to me less, replying to me less, and to get tasked and to report on our progress, I decided to start finding ways to include people above him into conversations so I knew it was getting up to them (Problem 1). We meet as a group each day at various times to do various things where attendance is required, one day in February, he overslept and was late to our group meeting (Problem 2). World ending? No, but how does your project team feel when the guy they're working for isn't there when he is supposed to and you've been working hard on your job? We have other weekend meetings to plan out the next 2 weeks of project goals and discuss the previous week of accomplishments. Throughout the time, my friend is showing up just on time or a few minutes late(Problem 3). Again, not world ending. Next up we have spring break, time to relax, and then school slaps us in the face again and so does the project we're working on. Yeah it sucks but we're adults and we should be able to get back to it. Manager sleeps through alarm again and is late to a requited meeting (Problem 4). Next, my friend/manager tells his manager says he'll be at an extra meeting that's kind of not required but it's nice to see a senior employee at your overtime meetings once in a while to know they share the suck. He decides it's not a big deal and bails day of, but after telling people he'd go, it's seen as another meeting missed, this time by personal choice (Problem 5).

We as a project group decide it's time for an extra meeting to hash out some problems with everyone as a whole getting lazy and performance falling, which this friend/manager should attend and sleeps through (Problem 6).  String of problems over a few weeks and the CEO(also my friend) decided he's fed up with his manager screwing up and we decide to sit him down and formally reprimand him. It sucks since all 3 of us sitting on the reprimand board meeting are friends with each other as well as with the kid who's getting reprimanded.

This is where things get hairy and why I spent time above detailing the situation. Since in the real world, you're probably not going to be really close friends with people at the bottom, middle, and top levels of a large company just due to age difference and the job, but playing at it here in a learning situation it's the reality you face putting peers in charge of each other. We sternly talked to him about screwing up and put him on some extra tasks to correct him. Now, while that may seem obvious, here's the part that I myself am learning and working on. Where did I go wrong? Where did I fail to act or help to stop this snowball before we had to put this guy on the brink of being fired? This is the part that makes the meeting suck since as you go through, hopefully you're as critical of yourself as you are him and you pick out places you say "I could've said/done something here to at least warn him to stop his destructive behavior." I've always had a problem with doing this too much, being too judgemental or critical of people and it's something I fought sophomore and junior years to stop because it hurts people more when you do it wrong. Telling your roommate in a harsh manor to quit something he's doing is as bad as after he messes up, telling them you told them so. But, done correctly in either situation can help guide them to a better path or at least let them know you care for them and genuinely want to help. Conversely, this means if you're in that situation you need to take criticism well and not snap. Yes, the first few times it will be hard but if you critically evaluate it and care about improving yourself, you'll strengthen yourself and your friend. Win-win, right?

Let me get on my soapbox real quick (probably doing what I said I shouldn't) but I'll try to put it in my perspective.  If you've got a manager that suggests you to do something, it's probably more than a suggestion and if you suspect it is, it's probably also okay to ask for clarification. It'll pay dividends when we're working our way up the corporate ladder since you'll look like a rockstar. If you don't do that (or know you've been dodging the work altogether) and get reprimanded, take it to heart and work to improve yourself. We are grown-ups now and soon to be on our own (36 days until graduation). Take the situation and make the best of it. It's an "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade," kind of deal. And if you're wondering where the lemons came from, ask yourself first. You might have been giving them away and are now just getting them back. We are the future, we are the (hopeful) leaders of a developing energy field with immense possibilities. We all learn but we learn especially well through mistakes and adversity. Go beyond the minimums. Like investments, whatever we put in now while we're young will hopefully show immense return later. Getting down off soap box, now.

We've spent almost 2 years together and aside from occasionally joking about swapping to PolySci, I wouldn't go back to change my major. We've had great discussions and expanded our views and we've had short discussions where the discourse was harsh, myself being a particular contributor to the latter.

Comments, criticism and rebuttals appreciated!
-Michael