I haven’t posted on Fistful of Talent in a few weeks. Turns out, I’ve been in a funk lately. See, my boss – in this case, Kris Dunn, really pissed me off. Here’s the backstory…
As most of you know, I’ve been contributing, ahem offending, the Fistful of Talent audience for about 2 years now. Recently, I wrote an article… took me 45 minutes of my life, uploaded it to FOT… another 10 minutes of my life and I think the post was prolly a solid B- like most of my work. The post was live for 2 hours, I promoted via social media and wham… the post was unceremoniously taken down. No explanation, no card, no reach around… nothing. Just deleted! Evidently, the name of the article and/or substance of the post and/or morale to the story offended some folks. What? Someone was offended by something I said, did or wrote. Stop the effing presses. I was completely shell shocked. Then I became mad. Then I became disgruntled. Who the f@%# was this guy to take down my s*#t? And so my disgruntled mind wandered further… f@%# this guy, f@%# FOT, f@%# this site, f@%# the world don’t ask me for s*#t, etc., etc., etc.
Man, I was way off the deep end. I even reached out to some folks I respect in the industry and asked them… was I acting like child, a prima donna, an idiot, etc? Btw, peer review is SO underutilized in our lives.
Time went by… I realized that like or it not… it was Kris’ decision… after all, he is my boss. And he didn’t owe me s*#t… I needed to get over myself, grow the f@%# up and move the f@%# on… and thus I did.
Here’s the thing that I learned about myself in the process… no one is above criticism. Not even me. See, I had become caught up… in my own head I was larger than the community of Fistful of Talent… and by being put in check, humbled in a way… I learned that I was a spoke in a much more important wheel. In a weird way, maybe this was just what the doctor ordered.
So all of this pseudo-drama got me thinking about the concept of disgruntled. I mean, it’s easy to write off the C talent mouth breathers. Fire those idiots. But, how do we manage our top talent when they become disgruntled? Excuse the inference (me = top talent). Do we over communicate? Do we let them wander about and solve the issue themselves? Do we bring in outside counsel or consultants? It’s a game of productivity, right? In the quickest time period possible, how do we get them back in to form? So, what would you do?
In the case of Kris and me, if he would have tried anything, I would have NOT reacted well. By giving me time to cool off, he managed this situation masterfully. Truthfully, I needed to learn this lesson for myself AND at my own speed. But, I’m not normal. #likeduh
Lastly, and just to put a bow on this… I think Kris was wrong for taking down the post. In my limited world, no matter how offensive, that’s what the comments section is for… let the audience tear me apart in the comments section. Let them sort it all out. That said, he’s the publisher and has to manage contributing authors, advertisers, etc. He’s my boss and I respect that fact. Lastly, Kris and I are good, FOT and I are good and I plan to keep on contributing as long as they will have me. Pow pow!
In case you’re curious, “fuck the world don’t ask me for shit” is a reference to The What… (1:30) http://youtu.be/F_Z_B7UQ5bU
Great article my friend, it does to speak to the fact that I don’t have to always agree or be agreed with. If I am always right then probably need some people around me. PS. I don’t have that issue, blessed with finding good objective peeps very willing to give it to me straight when I ask. And thank gawd you published this post, tired of the bitch, bitch, bitch about it. My life can now move on finally, damn.
Ah. Vacations are such a good thing. Two weeks of rolling around in the sand, staring at the sun and riding your bike puts things back into perspective. That said, there’s more of an art than you let on to managing top performers who are not direct employees.
That is, if you hire a great boxer and then ask him to take a fall, you’re probably headed for trouble. You can rely on being the boss, but only for so long when it comes to highly mobile talent.
It would be really interesting to see Kris weigh in on this and talk about the management lessons that come from managing a volunteer collective of A players.
I’d ask Belichick or Phil Jackson.
William, you bring your own china shop !
Hi Gang –
I’m a big believer in getting smart people to shake things up, and with that in mind FOT and KD are obviously always proud to present William J. Tincup. I looked back and I it looks like WJT is 15-20 posts in, including classics like “My Ninja” (real post and a take on slang that gets people fired in corporate America) and #@# the Police (I made that one up). In any event, I love WJT’s writing (that’s right, cup, I’m talking like you’re not even here..) and always want him around.
Now – there have been two occasions where I pondered taking WJT’s work down. The first one I called him and we agreed it should come down. The second one – the one that WJT has struggled with – involved a close, close friend of FOT having life circumstances that caused them to be concerned with WJT’s post. Compounding the problem was the fact that I had not seen the post before it went up – which was bad on my part. But that’s life in the show. With an editor and a couple of other jobs, I don’t always get around to reviewing each post before it goes up, and to be honest, I don’t really edit ideas very much in the 4-5 years that FOT has been around. Thus, the false sense of comfort.
So, without going into details, I made a call that the post needed to come down based on the appeal of the friend of FOT. Before I pulled it, I asked myself what a reasonable person would do in the circumstance, and also what the collective vote (keep it up or pull it down) would be of the FOT team if I asked. (I didn’t ask BTW – I knew that I needed to make the call and not defer responsibility) The answer was pretty obvious to me – I had to pull it – but I realized it was pretty unfair to WJT since it had already gone up.
Management sucks sometimes. I’m confident I did the right thing, but wish I would have seen the post before it went up so I could prevented how William has felt about this. Our editor let him know it was coming down, and I gave him time to cool down – I knew he was upset.
My editor sent this post to me before it went up and asked me what I wanted to do. I said that there’s no question we post this. I’m sorry it happened and hope that WJT continues to grace FOT with his brand of HR and Talent writing…. Much love and respect from me, WJT.
KD
I think some employees just have better days than others. For those that are stretched thin in the work place and also their personal life incidents like this can really put them over the top.
KD
Great comment… we should publish the original article but redact all the things that might be offensive… think old FBI files from the 70′s… title redacted… questionable content redacted, etc… that would be funny… at least to five people on the planet…
Back to the grind.
William
Now I’m very curious what the article was that was taken down.
Welcome to the world of HR. And the world of Social Media for that matter.
Couple of quick thoughts come to mind:
- A high performer is one that respects the leaders decisions without being pissy. So, by definition, if an employee previously thought of as a high performer is being a pain in the ass, they are no longer a high performer. Glad to see William has the maturity to lick his wounds and accept the situation for what it is. That takes a lot of self-insight, thick skin, and smarts.
- It’s tough to please everyone. Having managed an HR social forum for years I understand KD’s pain on having to delete a post of someone he likes and respects. It sucks. I have had to ban friends from our Forum when they kept pushing the envelope too much. In my case, I made the mistake of waiting too long. I wasn’t tough enough on the unacceptable behavior. Being a leader means making those tough calls that are going to upset some people. Kudos to Kris for doing what he felt he had to do. I know it ain’t easy, brother.
- Those who post on the Internet, even those whose brand is being irreverent, need to think about the objective of their posts as well as the ramifications. It’s not all about us. It’s not all about being funny or cool. They say all PR is good PR and pushing the envelope is definitely a way to get attention…but…it’s not a bad idea to think twice before posting. Sleep on it. Especially when we work in and around the HR space.
Ah humanity. . . .
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” – Mahatma Gandhi
I think business blogs in general should have more profanity.
I think it’s the most natural thing for people to swear about.