What I learnt today...

There are times when another person's bad behaviour brings the realisation that we should never speak without having all of the facts. A senior manager at work today had a monumental hissy fit and succeeded in little more than making himself look like a total twat.

It lowered any respect that I might have had for him and I even felt the need to feel embarassed for him at the inappropriateness of his actions. My two co-workers and I were forced to witness the tirade and could do nothing other than sit numbly looking at our computer screens in shock at his appalling lack of professionalism.

Swearing and abusing one of our senior external consultants and big-noting his own role within the company without first asking some calm questions to get the facts was his initial mistake. His second mistake, if you're going to berate or even verbally attack someone - then at least do them the courtesy of doing it in privacy without witnesses.

I'm sure the fallout from this one is still to come. Kudos to the person being attacked who calmly listened then quietly defended his position and maintained every ounce of professionalism and control. He didn't fight back or lower his standards by swearing and attacking in defense. It was an eyeopener to say the least.

Following that lesson in how 'not to manage people', I then attended a women's networking forum that my company has every few months. There were two guest speakers who presented on the importance of work life balance and the importance of being happy and doing what makes us happy. Reinforcement of so many things that I post about here, but also several additional things which I took away from it.

1) You only have one life, make the most of it.
2) You shouldn't wait until a major life changing event like cancer before deciding what's important in your life.
3) Work / life balance doesn't necessarily need to be an even balance of all of the important components in our lives. At different stages of our lives we will have a focus on different things - it's all about balance but in proportions that work for us.
4) Sleep is very important for our bodies to be able to repair themselves. Our sleep patterns occur in roughly 90 minute blocks and go through 5 stages several times during the night. Hence 6 hours or even 7.5 hours sleep a night would be more ideal than 8 hours, because awakening during one of those stages can leave us feeling like we've been hit by a truck. So now I know why.
5) The mayonaise jar and two cups of coffee story - you may have heard it before and I had, but it still resonated strongly hearing it again.

It was a marvellous day of learning and greater understanding of life and ways of making it better than ever. Furthermore, in the group of roughly 50 people, I was one of only about 5 people who could say they had written down their goals and objectives.

Hope you could take something small from my learnings today.

Cheers, Fi

There is nothing more galling to angry people than the coolness of those on whom they wish to vent their spleen. ~Alexandre Dumas