Being Self Conscious

Today's Topic of Interest!

Being ridiculously self-abasing.

I think that at my job, being confident is the key to success. Yet in the culture I was raised in, pride and confidence were not something that were necessarily established. With very intelligent and sometimes critical parents, primarily my father, accomplishments were often picked at rather than applauded.

Yet being a manager means that if I don't have confidence in myself, neither do the employees that are under my command. Working hard, and being understanding, are not enough in a job where weakness is exploited. If I work too hard, or even am too empathetic to the people that I work with, I have found that they will just not work as hard as they need to. They feel like since I am helping them so much, that they can slow down and take their time.

Which is generally never my intention.

So, I've decided that being a manager entails that I must walk around with a certain amount of confidence, not only in myself but also in the people that I work with. If I focus too much on just helping them out, then they don't grow cause I'm almost doing their job for them. But there's also a fine line.

Sometimes I'll walk into work and be overbearing. I'll be critical and picky, and the people I work with will get very annoyed. So I've learned that SOMETIMES it's okay to slide.

It's incredible how much self-doubt I'm faced with when asking people I work with to do certain tasks, but also incredible how rewarding a great shift can feel.

The most important advice I can give to fellow managers is that they believe in themselves, because that will lead to the other great qualities that go into a great leader. Believe in yourself that you can lead your team to success, believe that you can help them grow into better workers, believe that you can do the tasks that are necessary for success throughout the day, and believe that the people you work with will appreciate your efforts, because they will recognize that you are going above and beyond to be the best you can be.

Off to work! See you guys later. :)

The Naming of This Blog

I just wrote a whole first entry, then decided it sucked. I'm going to try and make this the easiest on you as possible, so here it goes.

Reasons for not naming the blog right away?

1. I can't name something if I don't know its inherent nature yet.

2. It would be amazing if readers could read along as I discover its purpose.

3. I would spend way too long trying to figure out a name.

Today's TOPIC of Interest.

Sexism in our language?

According to my Psychology textbook from last semester, when people use the word "he" or "him" in a sentence, it encourages a slight bias to picture the male gender. Now, this makes sense, right? I mean, if I say "He went to the bathroom", then the reader assumes a male went to the bathroom. However, it is not so simple!!

In our language, (and by our I mean mine which is English), he can represent both a male and a female. Because we have no neutral term to describe him/her, technically in a sentence that simply refers to a person, in a choice between him/her, the writer is supposed to use "him."

They talked in my textbook (Hockenbury&Hockenbury if you're interested), about the fact that when both men and women were asked to picture a person described in a sentence using the neutral word "they", they would more often picture a male than a female. Which suggests a bias.

This doesn't mean the world is going to fall apart, but I thought you should know. If you wanna email me, I'm at the.yearling@gmail.com. Tell me all your opinions on this! But, in the meantime, I'll be trying to counter this trend by simply replacing "he", with "she".

How about 'dem apples? : As a man thinketh in her heart, so is she. -James Allen