Don't play the honesty, find the honesty in the momentand this my blog readers, is as true and real as the water we drink.
In this holiday season, I have decided to write a bit about honesty and how it plays in the workplace. I believe being an honest person makes a great leader and the opposite just sets ourselves up for failure...
A couple of weeks ago, I was assigned a "one of a kind" project at work that was given to me given my expertise. As this blog is anonymous, I can't really provide specifics on the project, however the overall picture is that I was to be the project manager and was to work with a team to implement. My new boss however, was to be in charge of getting approvals from senior management when required. During the project implementation up until launch, my boss decided to make decisions outside the scope so as to please senior management and launch on time.
I warned her not to do so and requested written approvals from her in order to launch as she specified. Although she hated me for it, she knew she had no choice but to provide approvals in writing as I was not in agreement with her decision-making and actually advised her against it.
Upon project launch, everybody was extremely happy. We launched on time and the project showed great results. Senior management congratulated my boss and gave her great reviews on the success of it once we/she showed the results. Never once was my name or that of my team mates' mentioned, nor was there any recognition, nor did she acknowledge me.
No biggy, I saw it coming given the fact that we bumped heads a bit during the implementation, and of course, I had a feeling things will surface one way or the other. So I kept quiet and went out of my way to congratulate her and show it was ALL her.
As the days went by, a few hiccups in the project started to show up...nothing major, just that the project had the wrong contact info in one market. Nothing major...right? WRONG! During project approvals, instead of showing the project "template" to senior management, she reviewed herself and off she went approving. Once a person from up above noticed the error, the s%&^* hit the fan. My boss was called on meetings, conference calls, etc. Even the CEO got involved as this person was really upset and she was called into a meeting to explain what had happened. Although this error could have been a mistake by anybody in the food chain (including me), senior management at my company always believe that as mid manager and project leader, the facing person is always in charge of making things right and taking responsibility for the project. I found out later on she threw everybody under the bus, including me. But I never once heard a bip of it from my peers or even the bosses themselves. So at the end of the day, I was happy I never got recognition as I was not directly responsible for the end result and I had written confirmation on all approvals. Like I said, no biggy.
I know this blog post is not as exciting as the "Dark with a bit of sugar" one, but it does goes off to show that you can not play the honesty. I believe that being humble, and not in the sense of one of my first posts, but in the sense of realizing when one makes mistakes...is paramount for one's career. Accepting to be wrong is accepting to be continuously learning and hence getting experienced on it. Accepting to have not done any wrong, its like denying one ever needs to learn. So to my boss...Honestly? Really though? Honesty :)
Sincerely,
A woman.
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