Recently, in one of the meetings at work, a colleague was very keen to convey that I had not done much of the task I had been set. Well, it was not so much “you have not done it”, but more “there was no progress shown”. The two are different, but the second can be taken as the first. In any case, the colleague and I are not on the same “side”. They are not using words that convey more of “support” for me than to point out the “truth” of my lack of doing.
It is a side note that I did not explain or say anything to defend myself. It’s not my interest to explain, it would sour the tone of the meeting. Well, it might not “sour” the meeting, but I have no interest in continuing finger pointing. I have no interest in conveying who else is in the fault to make my life difficult that in turn caused me appearing to have “lack of progress”.
I said the above is a side note because what was interesting was that a day after that meeting, one of my managers, who was in the first meeting, was in another meeting with me along with some other colleagues except the one mentioned above. In explaining a task for all of us – which was about updating information in some format that each of us was goig to do, this manager, when addressing me, prefaced it by saying “it’s not your fault”. Of course, it was not my fault that the format of the information lacked tidiness. Firstly the information was set up by another colleague sometime ago. Secondly, all of us are now going to amend the format of our own information. So it is not that the format that require revising is attributed to me only – all of us had to revise our own information.
Prefacing “it’s not your fault” is telling in that the manager appears to think a little in advance of the impact of what they were about to say, and that they were probably aware of the remnant of the other meeting where it was made known to me that some tasks had not be completed because there was a fault, and I was part of the fault. Perhaps the fact I didn’t raise my game and defended myself was beginning to impact on the manager that there were other factors in play that was beyond my control that impacted the tasks. Time will tell whether things will be better for me.
