Knowing your job
More careery musings …
When I was in college, I worked as the director’s assistant on a production of Hamlet. (Never had more fun on a show in my life. You want backstage camaraderie, private jokes galore, and excellent cast parties: do a tragedy. Comedies are only fun for the audience.) “Director’s assistant,” unlike a lot of jobs in theater, is about as ill-defined as the responsibilities of a superhero’s sidekick. What the director told me on Hamlet, though, was this: “Your job is to offer me suggestions to say ‘no’ to.”
I was awfully glad he explained that, because he did say no to just about every idea I had, and it could have gotten quite demoralizing otherwise. But as he explained it, the exercise of thinking through my suggestions, and why they would or would not work, helped hone his vision of the play. Everything that he said no to was something that was carved away, leaving a leaner, more focused production in its wake.
I’ve never forgotten that, obviously, and I’m really glad that I had that experience, and with a teacher and mentor who taught me what it was all about. I recently finished a huge project at my Harvard job — my boss’s first book is being published this spring, and we were in final edits until alarmingly recently. And a good deal of what I was doing, during the last few months and weeks, was offering my boss suggestions that he said no to. Let’s remove this chapter. No. Let’s take this part out and put it here. No. Let’s add this variable to this graph. No.
They weren’t bad suggestions on my part. And he wasn’t necessarily wrong to say no to them, either. They were valid ideas that needed to be considered, and I think the act of saying, “This is what my book isn’t” helped my boss clarify what, indeed, his book was.
There’s the job that’s written down in the job description, and then there’s the job you’re actually hired to do. In a functional workplace, these two jobs are at least roughly correlated. But “managing the boss” is part of every job. So is “socializing in a way that is subdued enough not to make you gossip fodder but lively enough to make it look that you are actually having fun and not just putting in an appearance because it’s expected” (welcome to holiday season!). There’s always emotional or intellectual labor involved, whether you are a professor or a plumber, a sales clerk or a psychiatrist.
What kind of emotional/intellectual labor do you wind up doing in all your jobs? As noted, I’m the ideas/alternative perspectives person, and thanks to Professor Ron Willis, I know when to fight for my ideas and when to let them go. The ConductMom is the Difficult People Whisperer. (Note to anyone who’s worked with her: Oh, she liked you. They didn’t assign her to you because you’re difficult. Really. She told me.) Other people become the party planners, the morale chiefs, the bureaucracy wranglers … what job do you always have, regardless of what job title you might be sporting?
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10 Responses to “Knowing your job”
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Child developmental and family dynamic specialist.
Erika is the one who actually has a job with that title, but she has the education to back it up. I’m just forever trying to figure out these small (and not-so-small-anymore) people in front of me, and I have an awful habit of forgetting they’re individuals and focusing more on WHAT I’m trying to teach than WHOM I’m trying to teach. This, especially this week, tends to result in meltdowns and shutdowns in which ain’t nobody happy.
Then add the parent in the room into the mix, which makes me guarded, add also my tendency to become defensive about feedback (another major personal flaw), and I find myself seriously considering switching to a trade profession on a regular basis, because I seriously doubt my adequacy as a teacher.
Then I go home, calm down, regroup (sometimes there is rum involved) and vow to do better next time.
At least I’m never bored.
I’m the Trainer, who can be called upon at a moment’s notice to teach co-workers about things that the suits in charge couldn’t be arsed to inform them about. We actually *have* people to do the training and who are compensated nicely for doing so, yet I find myself giving off-the-record classes and such in order to get co-workers up to speed.
I’m glad to help my co-workers, but boy, it’s getting more and more irksome having to ride in on my white horse and save these executive jerks’ day with nary a “thank you”.
I am the person they come to for anything in my department. Need a powerpoint? Ask me. Need help with Excel? Ask me. Need a whole lot of data entry done for something by tomorrow? All me. (Well, me and my other half. :)
I rather like being the go to person. It makes me feel appreciated.
Other the other hand, I’m very glad you mentioned things to say no to. I often make suggestions for things and am almost always shot down. Knowing that can be a good thing helps.
I’m the all-purpose eliminator of confusion. Including my boss’s confusion. Mostly it’s just having been at the place for so long that I can tell you the exact person, place, or procedure for whatever is required, and give you a brief narrative history on how that thing has changed over the past 17 years.
Among other things, this means very often having calls transferred to me because “I had no idea who they needed to talk to, but I figured you’d know.” It can be annoying, but also rather flattering.
I often get turned to for party planning. Right after I read this post this morning, I got an email asking if anyone had taken the new person out to lunch. I get these questions often as well as, are we planning a baby or wedding shower for someone or don’t you think we should have a summer celebration, stuff like that. I’ve been told that I’m good for team morale so I guess I’m the defacto office cheerleader. :) What is interesting to me is that I’m part of the professional staff so this is definitely not in my job description to party plan. I do enjoy it and I also spend a lot of time wondering if my actual job is something i want to do for the rest of my life (or even the next 5 years). So maybe I need to stop fighting it and find a place for myself where I can entertain people, make cakes and cookies and be that cheerleader without the rest of my job getting in the way.
My actual job description is to answer phones and order office supplies. But since I need to fill the other seven hours of my day and our IT Department doesn’t really know if its breakfast or arseholes on a regular basis, I’ve become the underground tech support/office equipment repair/database programmer/computer trainer/program beta tester/IT efficiency manager for the office. I’ve also taken up the work of two secretarial positions they’ve been unable to fill for budget reasons. Ironically, because we’re a closed union shop with extremely rigid HR rules, I’m not technically eligible to actually be hired into those positions, even if I’ve been doing them. I’m also not technically eligible for an IT position, even though I’ve been doing their work and correcting their mistakes for years now :-)
I’m also an as-yet unsuspected consultant for the “Axis of Weasel”, which is responsible for most of the more creative pranks and shenanigans in the office.
I’m sooooo sending a link to this page to the directrix of the show I’m working on (as assistant and costumer)!
I’m a Translator. When I audited pension plans for a living, I essentially translated between Legalese, Accountant-Speak, IRS-ese and Basic Joe. I was also the office buffer between IT and end users because I can translate Basic Geek to Basic English, and Basic Idiot-User into Basic Geek.
Artistically, I tend to assist creative people in translating their high concepts into consistent narratives (by lots of throwing out of ideas to be said no to, or adopted and adapted, and by lots and lots and lots of requests for clarification). I then translate that vision into a physical reality.
I generally see this as a very Good Thing, but I’m not sure everyone in my life does, because one of the side effects is that I tend to see everyone’s side.
I’m the griper…I’m the one who is usually self-nominated or elected to speak on behalf of the other coworkers with the complaints. I find it crazy that we all THINK THE SAME THING but nobody is willing to open their mouth and express their concerns. So that’s my job.
That’s kind of a Translator function, too.
I’m the control rod.
I can keep my head when those about me are losing theirs and blaming it on–not necessarily me, but I find that I’m willing to eat some extra blame in the interest of moving on to solve the problem.
I’ve always been bemused by the idea that being a ‘people-pleaser’ is considered a pathology, since in my case it’s also an essential job skill. Probably I’m saved from being the pathological case by my knowledge that some people can’t BE pleased; in some parts of my life, I generate my own approbation, and cultivate neutrality toward the opinions of others.