Mitch’s Blog

For the next few weeks I’ll be doing a consulting assignment in Pennsylvania. As with most places I go to, one of the first questions I’m asked is where I’m from. Instead of getting specific with it, I just say I’m from the Syracuse, NY area.

Now, depending on where I am, the response to that is always interesting. When I’m in most parts of the country, people usually know something about how good the local college basketball team is; winning a NCAA championships helps put you on the map. When I’m in downstate New York, the conversation is usually about our snowy weather.

This week, whenever I mentioned it, I got one of two responses. One of those responses is “That’s where our Gerry McNamara played”, said with pride as he helped Syracuse win that national championship, plus they loved how he gutted it out and carried Syracuse on his back to their last Big East Championship. The other answer threw me for a bit: “You guys have a good hockey team.” There is a local minor league hockey team in town, and this year they actually went on a long winning streak to make the playoffs, only to get bounced in some round, but that was this year, and they haven’t really been what anyone would consider as “good” for all that long. Also, this particular area has a competing hockey team, the only major sport in the area I suppose (not sure how far Penn State is from where I am, though there’s a satellite campus in the area), so the name would be familiar to them.

Perspective is always interesting because one person can have the same point of reference at all times but other people who are receiving the same information will process it differently. It’s like a woman looking at the color of a shirt and calling it “pumpkin”, while most men would call it “orange”. It’s one reason why, if you ask most policemen, they worry about witness accounts because 100 people can see the same incident and each one of them might tell a different story. The truth is in there somewhere, and it’s up to the detectives to piece it all together at some point.

It’s these thoughts about perception that impacts how we all work and live with each other, and whether those perceptions are positive and negative. I’ve talked a lot lately about the perceptions of race. I also talked about the differences in how people manifest their reactions to the same emotion, like fear or worry. It’s not always easy to control how people will respond to input, no matter how much we may practice or try to anticipate the outcome.

So, sometimes the best you can do is to try to control the message and the intention. The message needs to be truthful, and the intention needs to be honest. Even with that, the perception of those you impart that message upon might not be what you’re expecting. But at that point, at least there’s a better chance that the person you’re addressing will give you the opportunity to make a clarification.

Anxiety is a strange thing. We get anxious for many different reasons, and it manifests itself in many different ways.

We can get anxious because we’re starting a new job. We can get anxious worrying about whether we can pay all of our bills. We can get anxious because we’re worried about the health of someone we know. Goodness, we can get anxious wondering how much gas will be in the morning.

And when we’re anxious, we may not sleep well. Our hearts may beat harder or faster than normal. We may overheat and sweat a lot. We may start having problems breathing. We may feel faint, and have difficulty walking.

That’s the strange thing about anxiety. One, it could be for something good or bad. It manifests itself in strange, uncontrollable ways. And it often is for something that we’re not sure what will happen to begin with.

So, if we can exhibit anxiety in all these ways, at almost any time, what is it that makes managers think that their employees, new or existing, won’t have anxieties for some of the things that are done to them? You change their job duties when they’ve been doing the same thing for years. You move them to a new desk or a new office where they’re suddenly around different people. They know their job evaluation is coming up but you haven’t given them any clue over the year as to whether they’ve been doing a good job or not. They hear the company isn’t doing well and start worrying about their job.

It’s incumbent on managers, being in the leadership position, to try to alleviate as much stress and anxiety as possible from their employees during the work day. They will always find ways to manifest their own anxieties without any encouragement from management, that’s for sure. And managers never want to be the ones responsible for the anxieties of their employees, because it will affect how they do their job.

And it won’t be for the better either.

Tomorrow morning I hit the road for a few weeks on a consulting assignment. I only found out about it earlier today, and they absolutely need me on the premises before noon tomorrow.

Initially I was ready to go into a panic, since I’ll be gone for the week. After all, if it was just an overnight trip and I had to pull a few things together, it’s not such a big deal. But packing for an entire week, especially when there are special needs to remember, can be taxing on one’s psyche.

Lucky for me, I remembered that I created a checklist of things I need to always remember to pack so that I don’t forget anything. It’s a fairly extensive list, because the little things are the easiest to forget. How many people have gone on a trip and forgot about socks or underwear? What about forgetting a belt because you traveled in sweats, as I often do on airplanes?

So, I have a checklist that has two columns. One column is only for things I need to make sure I have in the car on those occasions I’m driving, which I will be doing this time around. This means I need to make sure I have my GPS system and charger in the car; I get lost often. It also means I need to remember to have my books on CD to listen to, and I usually take some kind of coat with me in case there’s inclement weather.

For everything else, I’ve already mentioned a few things to make sure of. However, those special needs things include the items that are related to my diabetes, which means my glucometer, my medications, and, this time around, my insulin, as my wife and I will have to try to figure out how to keep it cold while not having it freeze, since I’ll be going to the work site instead of the hotel first. This is something new for me, but I made sure it was the first thing I added to the list.

I’m one of those people who believes in having plans in place just in case something comes up that you may have to deal with, just in case. Some offices keep procedure manuals, some don’t, but even in those offices that have manuals already, there should be specific answers to problems that have already been solved that can be accessed quicker than having to read through an entire manual once again. We all have been in situations that have occurred before, and our first thought is “I wonder what we did last time”.

So, being prepared for the unknown, especially if it’s something that occurs often, is a smart thing to do. And if you can prepare for the unknown as well, you’ll be even further ahead of the game.