William the Disgruntled

William Tincup Bad HR, Communication, Culture, Good HR, Influence, Leadership, Performance, Personal Brand, William Tincup

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 [email protected]%# was this guy to take down my s*#t? And so my disgruntled mind wandered further… [email protected]%# this guy, [email protected]%# FOT, [email protected]%# this site, [email protected]%# 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 [email protected]%# up and move the [email protected]%# 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!