Checked Out: Cinderburg Part 19
I’d pushed for my department. I’d advocated. I’d pointed out the questionable practices of someone’s unilateral decision making process and the negative impacts, and still had been told “tough cookies.” So I still pushed and earned a meeting with my manager, which, for some inexplicable reason, filled me with dread.
Conveniently, my younger sister had a baby the weekend before our scheduled meeting, which delayed things.
But only by a few days.
I knew we’d be discussing my recent email. We simply had to. Her request for a meeting fell too soon after I sent it.
The meeting came. I entered her office and sat down.
Sylvia asked me a few questions at first, like why I hadn’t said any of the email’s contents in the meeting last week, why I’d agreed to the meeting’s outcome when I very obviously didn’t want to. I told her I had said all of this the week before. I had clearly expressed what we needed in the department, but was pressured into accepting what was being offered.
Then Sylvia turned the conversation in a direction I wasn’t expecting.
“Tell me, C, how do you view your leadership skills?”
I shook my head to clear it. I thought we were talking about the interns.
I said, “Well, I suppose I try to lead by example. I have regular meetings with my team where we discuss upcoming projects and I get their input on things. I ask them if anyone wants to handle a certain project. I assign things when they need to be assigned. Then we discuss together how they’ll handle their projects, and I leave them to it. I’ll check in with them a time or two, but I trust them to do what needs to happen to get it done and move on. Why?”
She sighed like what she said next was going to be difficult.
“I’ve had some feedback about your management style lately that concerns me. It appears that you micromanage the members of your team and you also have trouble allowing them to have input in running the children’s department.”
I felt like I’d been slapped. Again. I was micromanaging them? I didn’t allow them input?
“What do you have to say about that?” Sylvia asked plainly.
I was at a loss.
“I… I don’t know,” I blinked, going through all recent interactions with my team. I’d always prided myself on being self-aware. If I’d been micromanaging or denying them input, surely I would have noticed. But I couldn’t think of a single moment when I’d done either.
“Can you perhaps give me an example of how I’m micromanaging them or not asking for their input? Because I’m having a hard time thinking of when I do either of those things.”
“I don’t have any specific examples to share with you,” she said artlessly. She kept staring at me like she was waiting for me to confess some grievous crime.
I felt my skepticism rise. I’d been working really well with Amy. I had a hard time believing she’d say I was micromanaging her. Same thing with Alicia, since I gave her so much space.
“I don’t know exactly what you want me to say, Sylvia. I’ve been asking for their input for weeks now. Months. We just had a meeting last week where we divvied up assignments for the fall. I was delegating. I allowed them both opportunities to help decide things for the department.”
I proceeded to list all the things we’d discussed in the prior week’s meeting, which was lengthy. I hate to admit it, but the tears started flowing again.
By the time I was done, wiping my face dry with a tissue, Sylvia looked at me and said, “Well, it sounds like you’ve been doing everything you can to involve them.”
Yet even with these words, her doubt was evident.
“Look,” I finally said, because I still couldn’t think of anything I’d done, “I’m having difficulty figuring out where this line is. I’m supposed to advocate for my department, and I did that by meeting with you last week and writing you that email, explaining everything I was feeling. But you apparently did not get that message. I involve the staff in my department in planning things for the upcoming season, and I’ve been doing this for months already, and that’s still not enough involvement. There are things I’d love to hand off, but I literally can’t. Alicia isn’t allowed to take certain tasks because she’s a temp and not a full-time employee. Amy is five months pregnant and by the time she gets the hang of some of the things I want to give to her, she’ll have to give it right back because of maternity leave. I don’t know where this line is or what it is exactly that I’m doing wrong because, as you just said, it seems like I’m doing everything just the way that I should. How exactly am I supposed to improve? What exactly am I supposed to fix?”
Exasperation coated every question and Sylvia could see how agonized I was by this feedback. I’d been operating for the last few months under the impression that I’d been doing a good job. Sylvia had sat me down in that very chair and told me what a great job I was doing just a month before. But now I was desperate to figure out what I was doing wrong, and Sylvia could tell.
She considered for a moment and then said she’d budge on the intern thing. I got another day (though, again, it ultimately never happened. I have no idea if it was Sylvia or Barb who never followed through), and then she said, “Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll follow up with your team and see if they can share more details with me about what they meant exactly. Or, if you’d like, I could mediate a meeting between the four of us.”
“No!” I blurted, still stung from our last mediation with Barb.
“I’ve had meetings with them. Last week’s meeting was all about their workloads and what they might want to do for the fall and if any of them feel overloaded or if they would like to do more. Neither of them said a word. I don’t know that a meeting with me present would actually yield anything, since they’re obviously not OK with opening up to me in meetings that I actually host.”
Sylvia said she understood and promised to get to the bottom of it all.
I spent days racking my brain to see if I could remember doing anything in particular that might have led them to believe I was micromanaging or denying them input. The closest thing to micromanaging I’d come to was sitting with Alicia, asking her to tell me about her plans for a Bingo program and offering a few resources she could use to make the game cards. And with delegating, it was exactly like I’d said to Sylvia. I couldn’t delegate to Alicia because she wasn’t an actual employee. And Amy was going to leave soon. And I asked for their input repeatedly in the prior week’s meeting.
No. The only person that came to mind with any real complaints was Barb, and to this day I’m convinced this whole meeting was an attempt to manipulate me into dropping the intern thing.
Which had me flashing back to Gatherden and Susie.
The only good thing that came out of this conversation is that the manager admitted she dropped the ball on the communication front.
This was little comfort. I fixated on how I was being treated. It felt unjust. I was fighting for my department. I was defending my territory. I was digging my heels in. And because I was doing this just the once, I was brought into a meeting with the manager to be told I need to work on my leadership skills.
I wondered if I would face this every time I tried to be assertive.
To sum up: I was disheartened.
As you can probably tell, my first summer as the Cyprus children’s librarian was an emotional roller coaster, and we were barely into June.
But clarification was on the horizon. I just needed to let myself be vulnerable enough to get it, which we’ll hear all about next time.
Until then, I remain…
-C Quill
