Reverse Gear

Here's a bit of my downward trajectory story - or how my career slipped into reverse gear.

I had a sense, once our new IT Director was hired, that my days on the leadership team were numbered.
I knew we were on different pages right from the start. He met with each member of the leadership team, including me. During our meeting, I tried to promote the skills that I think I have (facilitation and strategic thinking) by offering to facilitate future strategic planning sessions. Instead, he wanted me to be his "ears to the ground" gal - keeping him in the loop when it came to staff - what they were thinking, the undercurrent rumblings of employees. I tried to explain that I wasn't that kind of person (I'm generally the last to know anything).
When he went ahead and formed a strategic visioning team and I wasn't on it, I had a bad feeling.

As the months went on, and I became embroiled in the day-to-day drama of running a team, I let the memory of that meeting fade away. It came back in full force when, in the summer of 2009, he sat down with each of us again, to find out where we saw ourselves in the new organization he was forming, using Requisite Organization principles.

After some perfunctory small talk (I was minutes away from taking off to Chicago to fly to England to visit my dying uncle), he dived right in, with a diagram of how the organization was shaping up. I told him I'd be quite happy in my current role as a Project Leader, didn't feel I'd really "nailed" it yet.

Apparently, neither did he. "I think you'd make an excellent business analyst." he said.

The word "analyst" is never something you want to hear, if you're currently in a leadership role.

With sinking heart, I remembered reading somewhere that you should always make your intentions clear, so I stared back and, with a cold voice, responded, "I would like to remain on the leadership team."

It was an awkward moment - but only a foreshadowing of the awkwardness that was to follow several months later.

Life is About the Stretch

"Life is about the stretch, not the fold." I came up with this line myself, while exchanging emails with DW. "Come on, you've gotta stretch yourself, dude!" I wrote, referencing his uncanny ability to hang tight to the status quo. Of course, this has led to a solid, respected career in our discipline.

I, on the other hand, suffered a career-limiting kick in the butt. Nevertheless:

"Life is about the stretch, not the fold." I continued.

I meant it is better to stretch oneself, rather than to fold in your cards and accept whatever is happening.

DW agreed it was a cool sentiment.

If leadership is in your soul, no demotion in the world can kill it. You'll bear scars, for sure, from wounds of pride. Being demoted is almost a form of corporate mental illness - no one wants to talk about it, it's awkward, and everyone just really hopes you will suck it up and move on. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again!

You can do that - you must do that - because there's also a whole new raft of possibilities that can present themselves.

I have to admit that, prior to my demotion, I never gave my career much thought. It just kind of happened. I found myself, after a thirteen year stint as a high school teacher, in an IT department at a small natural gas company. This was a considerable surprise, as I had taken Fortran back in university, and failed it miserably. In fact, after the school generously offered me the opportunity for a summer rewrite, I managed to lower my final mark! So I had written computers off. Until Bill Gates came along, slapped a "graphical user interface" with colors, and buttons and windows on top of the bits and bytes mathematical logic, and my English-besotted brain found what it had been looking for.

After five years, I was promoted to a mid-managment leadership role, at the helm of a small group of professionals, most of whom did work I didn't really understand. That all came to a halt in January 2010, when we had a reorg, and I was unceremoniously bumped from my happy little throne - back to the same role and boss, DW, I had back before it all started.

Sort of a career "Groundhog Day" - for those of you who are familiar with the movie in which Bill Murray has to live through the same day over and over and over and over again until he gets it right. Each morning, he wakes up exactly where and when he was the day before.

That's how it felt - Groundhog Day in corporate Canada. The eagle soars, the ostrich touches ground and stays there. I am - the ostrich. Or, perhaps, the dodo bird. Is my leadership extinct, or am I just grounded for a while? I guess that all depends on whether I stretch or fold.

I choose stretch.