How often do you have extremely polite conversations with someone at work about a controversial topic, that then turns into email-war?
There are two words that come to mind: chicken shit. I realize that this falls under the “emotional honesty” category of trends in 2011 and 2012. So here I am, calling a spade a spade. Or chicken.
How do we handle these moments of email war? I can pound madly on my keyboard and feel satisfaction with every key stroke formulating my emotions and resulting in verbal punishment (falling within my own self-righteousness of WHY I’m the better person), and then I can save the email as a draft or delete it before I actually hit the send button.
The BEST part of email is that you CAN delete or, if you have to, send to a friend who can tell you not to send it.
The WORST part is that managers don’t always do the hardest part of their job – MANAGE in person. They do it by email – which is a total cop out.
It’s not all rosy at the top. Remember Team America and Kim Jong-Il singing “I’m so Ronery (lonely with an accent)”?
Well we all laughed, because it’s true. It can be lonely as a leader. It’s better to keep your thoughts to yourself and only confide in folks away from work who are complete confidants. At work, treat your friends and allies the same – they are all trying to do what you are – work and perform well and hopefully reap the benefits from a culture of reward.
I can say that, although reward doesn’t happen much for most of us, we can at least dream…and be the true leaders we aspire to be, tackling real problems.
Agent M
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