The Worst Within Us

Yesterday in training we had to do one of those self-tests that helps you determine your 'communication style' by asking you to rate what response out of four options is most like you for about 20 given situations. Then you calculate your score, trace it to your style and learn all of the best and worst aspects of your personality and why you succeed or fail at work.

Yeesh. All that after just 10 minutes worth of response ratings?

Of course there are always some aspects of these tests that make us say 'yes - that is definitely me' and then there are others where we just snort and say 'HA. Whatever.' But it just made me think about the fact that if we really are honest with ourselves - do we actually need a test to tell us any of this stuff?

I'm pretty aware of the worst parts of my personality - especially at work. I'm demanding. Picky. Anal retentive. I want things just-so (color-coded, natch) and I want them in full sentences dang it! I am a stickler for old-school office etiquette (don't sit in someone's office until asked, wear closed-toed shoes) and I have high expectations for my staff straight down to the newbies but also for my higher-ups - and I can be unforgiving when repeatedly disappointed. I also tend to put off assignments that I'm not interested in or feel unprepared for and I ask extensive questions about pretty much anything I'm asked to do. And I hate review notes. Nothing irks me more than having to return to something I've already finished to redo it - which is completely hypocritical because, since I'm so picky, I leave TONS of review notes.

I can come up with all of that in no time flat because I know it about myself. I'm sure there are negative aspects of my personality I gloss over but I do my best to be honest with myself (and my staffers - I admit all of these things to them up front). But I try to remind myself that there are positive aspects to my personality as well.

My main goal with every staffer is to teach them as much as possible. Anything they want to know, sometimes more than they want to know. I will stop whatever I'm doing, at any time, to answer a question or help them in any way. They are absolutely my first priority and I have been told (in more than one upward evaluation) that they know that. I'm also a stickler about not asking anything of my staff that I wouldn't do myself - and I've been told they know that too.

One of my staffers is an excellent barometer for how I'm doing at balancing out the good in me with the worst in me because she's one of those tell-it-like-it-is women that doesn't pull punches. She has told me that she likes working with me because she knows without a doubt that I wouldn't waste her effort on something I didn't think was important. (She's also told me that sometimes while clearing my internal control review notes she wishes she could smack me.)

I'm not really sure what the benefit is to my telling you any of this except to say that I think it's important that we all contemplate the best and the worst aspects of working (living, or loving) with ourselves and do our best to balance out the two. We can't always quell the worst aspects of our personalities, and sometimes we shouldn't. My pickiness may be frustrating at times for the people working with me, but there are very real benefits to having high documentation standards (and when it becomes second-nature to them they aren't quite so annoyed anymore anyway).

At least... that's what I'm going to tell myself.

In any case, it's important to realize that we all take our two wonky halves and use them to patch together an imperfect whole and there's really no reason not to acknowledge our own weaknesses because if we ignore them, they are far more likely to bite us in the butt.