Worklife

Today was an interesting day. One of those that makes me so grateful for not having a routine at work.

It started with a 1 hour, turned into 3, with my boss, the other managers (my teammates) and his executive career coach. It was more of a therapy session geared towards discussing his strengths and weaknesses and how we could help him realize his leadership potential. I felt so torn between being honest and being smart in giving my input while keeping the boss happy. Thank God for biz school management classes and other cheap psychology knowledge which allowed me to come up with the constructive feedback with something along the lines of “I really appreciate your energy and enthusiasm, and since it is contagious to our team dynamics, the flip side is that when you are in a bad mood, it affects our mood as well, so this is a development point”. Argo: “please don’t take your shit out on us…etc”. Thankfully the meeting was in Portuguese, which helped me keep my mouth shut and not say anything I may regret after.
I think I’m going to look into this career coach business. Seems like a good cash cow..

The next activity of my day was a presentation to a group of 50 part-time MBA students from the midwest. I was a bit worried since it was my first time to make an hour long presentation for a large audience. Especially about something I don’t know too well (ie the entire business strategy of my company). But once again, I exceeded my own expectations and delivered the presentation almost flawlessly and even got laughs from the audience. Luckily, the students didn’t ask too many questions and were partially sleepy or hungover (or both). Boss was once again happy.

My third activity involved me mentoring my analyst and empowering him to do his job better and take initiative. That one is still work in progress but have been enjoying this exercise in psychology quite a lot.

Grobby is evolving indeed. Good times!