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Having a failure of imagination.
Mar. 12th, 2018 10:39 pmHello there, list. I seem to be stuck in a mental pattern of "I have not made a difference and will likely not make a difference." Call it the down side of the Hufflepuff, if you like, the part where someone is working hard and patiently at a thing and the reward for that thing, if there is a reward for achieving it, is very far off in the distance.
I think I know what has brought this on - selecting sessions for the conference that I will be attending later in the month. When I go to work-related conferences, I generally tend to select sessions that are about issues that I want to know more or participate in - things like diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, being welcoming to everyone, and the like. I want to be able to make my own practice a good one that the people in my community will feel comfortable and welcomed around.
I also want to not be the only person pursuing this goal of self-improvement at my location and in my system. I want everyone else to be engaging in the thought of self-improvement as well. I want my organization to adopt and make strides toward these things. The tools and ideas that come out of these sessions are good ones, but then I run full-force into the understanding that I do not have the managerial power to try and implement changes or get people to respect them. And that there's enough problems in the organization itself that I'm pretty sure I don't actually want to join the ranks of the managers, either. Which means I'll have ideas and new tools and basically nowhere to let them loose so that I can spread them around. And no guarantees that the people who might need it the most will receive it and take it to heart. It's a cycle, of sorts, when working with my institution. Early on in my career, I'd be much more willing to try and push the idea through, however I could, despite being in a position that has no actual power. Now, I'm a bit more strategic in the thinking, but I also realize that it's a tricky task to get someone higher up the food chain to take your idea and do something with it, given that there are so many other ideas they're coming up with and will implement instead.
There's still no direct communication channels or ways of making suggestions where there will be a guarantee of at least a well-thought response from senior management. So I think this feeling is a certain amount of cynicism setting in about being able to affect organizational change with the knowledge that I will be collecting in the future, and the feelings from that are bleeding over into pathways established by other events and people that are well-worn and lead to the feeling that because I have not created a sea change in my environment, I have created no change at all. I am staring at the lack of forest and not noticing the saplings and the trees that are already there.
So I would appreciate counterexamples. I'm working through You Feel Like Shit, and this is the part where I'm taking fifteen minutes to talk about it with people. I'll keep on going with it after I've finished posting this.
I think I know what has brought this on - selecting sessions for the conference that I will be attending later in the month. When I go to work-related conferences, I generally tend to select sessions that are about issues that I want to know more or participate in - things like diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, being welcoming to everyone, and the like. I want to be able to make my own practice a good one that the people in my community will feel comfortable and welcomed around.
I also want to not be the only person pursuing this goal of self-improvement at my location and in my system. I want everyone else to be engaging in the thought of self-improvement as well. I want my organization to adopt and make strides toward these things. The tools and ideas that come out of these sessions are good ones, but then I run full-force into the understanding that I do not have the managerial power to try and implement changes or get people to respect them. And that there's enough problems in the organization itself that I'm pretty sure I don't actually want to join the ranks of the managers, either. Which means I'll have ideas and new tools and basically nowhere to let them loose so that I can spread them around. And no guarantees that the people who might need it the most will receive it and take it to heart. It's a cycle, of sorts, when working with my institution. Early on in my career, I'd be much more willing to try and push the idea through, however I could, despite being in a position that has no actual power. Now, I'm a bit more strategic in the thinking, but I also realize that it's a tricky task to get someone higher up the food chain to take your idea and do something with it, given that there are so many other ideas they're coming up with and will implement instead.
There's still no direct communication channels or ways of making suggestions where there will be a guarantee of at least a well-thought response from senior management. So I think this feeling is a certain amount of cynicism setting in about being able to affect organizational change with the knowledge that I will be collecting in the future, and the feelings from that are bleeding over into pathways established by other events and people that are well-worn and lead to the feeling that because I have not created a sea change in my environment, I have created no change at all. I am staring at the lack of forest and not noticing the saplings and the trees that are already there.
So I would appreciate counterexamples. I'm working through You Feel Like Shit, and this is the part where I'm taking fifteen minutes to talk about it with people. I'll keep on going with it after I've finished posting this.
