Is It Time to Reassess What You Think?

STOP

In most companies, employees are asked to participate in a yearly performance appraisal. In the good situation, the employees actually take part in evaluating their own as well as hearing what their managers think. It’s a tiring, but important process. It gets us to STOP and look at where we were and where we are now — something we often forget to do unless we make it a priority.

If we don’t stop now and then, we get stuck in thinking things that aren’t necessarily true … about ourselves and about the folks we know.

Resorting and Re-evaluating

Meet Carol. Everyone at the company thought she was a pain. Seriously. If you asked her for a phone number she’d tell you to get a pencil and paper, then spend 7 minutes reciting out 7 digits. Any sane person could have walked 7 miles to talk to the person that the phone number led to. Carol loved details. No else like details of her specific brand.

Then one day I went to work, thinking that everyone had put Carol in a box. No one liked her. People often made her a topic of conversation.

It dawned on me that I’d been going along with the wisdom of the crowd on that….

One day I decide to wipe the slate clean. I pretended I’d never met Carol that I’d never heard a word about her before. What I found was both unsettling and amazing.

I actually liked her a lot and found her affinity for detail valuable to me because I don’t like details at all.

I’d let other folks put Carol in a box and I’d kept her there.

My loss.

One reassessment and now she was a friend and a resource to me. Challenging assumptions is a great strategy.

Is it time to reassess what you think?

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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