It’s a tough one but if you sit down and think about it logically, respect is something that is tough to gain, easily lost. But worst of all, if you lose it, it’s near impossible to regain it. Unfortunately this is indeed the predicament that I was plonked right into.
On the plus side, it is a bonus if you actually realise that this is the case and you don’t carry on the rest of your life not knowing it. In fact, hang on, is it maybe better not to know?
In order to function as a human being, or in order to utilise all (or at least the vast majority) of the functions that we have available to us, we have to be able to convey information or opinions to others. Yes, we can say ‘what we saw’ (I went to the Celtic game, it was 2-1), say ‘what’s going to happen’ (I’m going to go to the next game), say things that ‘are’ (Trump is a dickhead).
But in order to have that ‘conversation’, in order to gain ‘respect’ for your opinions, in order to differentiate your ‘self’ from another ‘self’, is the opinion or your ‘take’ on things (good score but wish we still had Tierney).
Now….
Let’s stick this into my world. I can’t harvest what’s going on, here there and everywhere. I can’t tell anyone what I did and I can’t tell anyone what i’m going to do. So, even when I do form an opinion about any of this, why the hell is anyone going to take it onboard? And the reality of all this is, why should they? I certainly wouldn’t.
It all leaves you on the perifiey of things. Conversations, relationships, organising things, living life, as most of us know it.
You can of course ‘wing it’ and fortunately I am good at this. Even before I got ill it was a skill that I had in abundance. It got me places in terms of my career. That, combined with confidence in myself meant that I could happily stand up in front of a crowded room and talk about business processes, my take on how companies should manage their data or the applications they should be investing in to enhance their organisation. I could walk into these situations knowing little or in some cases bugger all about the topic and walk back out with a fair few pats on the back.
After what happened though, I was left in situations where I had to sit in a Monday morning catch-up, sweating as project managers went round the table, and being outed as a complete tool. If can’t remember the name of the project you were working on, or the names of those sitting around you, it tells you all you really need to know.
So it ends up that you can sit and watch as the respect that you once had drifts away from you, sentence by sentence. In that Monday morning meeting, they all look at you in complete disbelief as you can’t tell anyone what you did last week (without scrambling through your notes), you’re stuggling to tell them what you’ve got set up for next week, and you can’t tell them the simple facts that surround you. Yes, you can prepare for all this in advance, have all your notes in order but there does come a point where you will come undone, when you’re drifting around the office trying to remember where on earth your desk is and ‘Tony’ becomes this idiot. A laughing stock to the team, and a liablity to a multi-million pound project!