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.