Wednesday 25 March 2009

Project feedback day

I wasn’t looking forward to this. I’m at least ten years younger than most of the people that I work with, and thirty younger than some of them, but I have an overview and governance role in my organisation. I run a project. They work on the project. Some of them see me as a young whippersnapper (young!) who has no place asking them to ___, ____ or ____. I’d dreaded this feedback day. Here comes an anger workout, punchbag: me. Gulp!

The fear of a thing can be worse than the thing itself. We split into small groups, with members of my team facilitating discussions. My group were constructive in their answers to questions, and showed empathy towards the difficulties my team faces. Something was wrong. “I’ve got a soft group,” I thought, “or I’m not asking the right challenging questions.” The plenary came, and the feedback from the other groups was similarly positive. It wasn’t going to be such a bad day after all.

No comments: