AlphaMindy Unveiled
Anyone who knows me know that, in general, I'm pretty easy going. Sure I have my obsessive-compulsive, slightly neurotic subtext, but I'm not a high-maintenance, my-way-or-highway kind of girl. I know the difference between my opinions and truth, even if I don't always state it that way. I don't take myself that seriously and can find humour in most things. I live a pretty non-confrontational life about 90% of the time. Affable, I think they'd call me.
But if you've known me very long, you also know that there is a threshold where the 90 is silenced instantly by the 10% bitch. (Stop quibbling with ratios...you know what I mean...) You can almost hear the door slam, and I go all aggressive business on you. What's your point? Substantiate it. Convince me you're not an asshole and that I should still be listening to you. We're moving on....are you coming????
I think of this person as the AlphaMindy.
Tonight, my learning team met her with a vengeance. The paper I wrote on Monday night has been revised, and revised, and revised. It is now a tight document that is ready to be polished, appendixed, and turned in. And tonight on our Skype call we start phaffing around again. I was the diplomat for awhile, listening and chatting and letting the subject bounce around. But I could feel the AM stirring, and about 30 minutes into the conversation WHAM she was commanding the call.
I think I startled them. You could hear furious typing, probably between the two people who were trying to change the document (or, rather, asking ME to change the document.) But my "assertiveness" got the team to vote and majority ruled on each issue. We incorporated everyone's feedback but watered some of it down because the person with the big idea couldn't actually implement it without starting the paper from scratch. Funny how you suggest they take on their own creative revision and suddenly they're willing to try a different tactic. And I made everyone say the were satisfied before we could end the call. Even if they were just scared to say they weren't, everyone heard them say it was okay.
After we hung up, two of the four people called me to comment on the dynamic, saying they're glad I handled it that way.
I wonder what the other two were talking about?
But if you've known me very long, you also know that there is a threshold where the 90 is silenced instantly by the 10% bitch. (Stop quibbling with ratios...you know what I mean...) You can almost hear the door slam, and I go all aggressive business on you. What's your point? Substantiate it. Convince me you're not an asshole and that I should still be listening to you. We're moving on....are you coming????
I think of this person as the AlphaMindy.
Tonight, my learning team met her with a vengeance. The paper I wrote on Monday night has been revised, and revised, and revised. It is now a tight document that is ready to be polished, appendixed, and turned in. And tonight on our Skype call we start phaffing around again. I was the diplomat for awhile, listening and chatting and letting the subject bounce around. But I could feel the AM stirring, and about 30 minutes into the conversation WHAM she was commanding the call.
I think I startled them. You could hear furious typing, probably between the two people who were trying to change the document (or, rather, asking ME to change the document.) But my "assertiveness" got the team to vote and majority ruled on each issue. We incorporated everyone's feedback but watered some of it down because the person with the big idea couldn't actually implement it without starting the paper from scratch. Funny how you suggest they take on their own creative revision and suddenly they're willing to try a different tactic. And I made everyone say the were satisfied before we could end the call. Even if they were just scared to say they weren't, everyone heard them say it was okay.
After we hung up, two of the four people called me to comment on the dynamic, saying they're glad I handled it that way.
I wonder what the other two were talking about?
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