Event #3: Promotion

I had dreamt throughout my entire career about being promoted.  I practically obsessed over it.  I would go through cycles of hoping for it, trying for it, getting disappointed, then asking myself why I felt my self-worth was based on promotion, then trying to accept my place in life, then slowly becoming inspired to try again and the whole cycle would start over.  Finally, in August of 2016, my dream came true and I was promoted.

I was on Cloud 9!  I felt so honored, important, and like I was finally a “part of the club”.  Things at work changed immediately.  There was no gradual easing into the position.  Within 48 hours, the average number of emails I received daily went from approximately 30 to 100.  For some people, this is no big deal, but for a snail like me, this was at first overwhelming.  I needed to figure out a system to be able to process all of these emails and still do my other work.  Despite feeling challenged, I remained confident that I would eventually find a way to keep up with all of the email traffic.

Then came the questions.  As a technical lead, I expected to receive questions and was happy to answer them.  After approximately 13 years in my previous position, I thought I would be well prepared to answer any question any of my colleagues had regarding how to perform our jobs.  I was wrong.  I was baffled.  How could this be?  After 13 years, how could there be sooooo many questions about rules, regulations, and SOPs that I could not answer off the top of my head?  For this, too, I did not despair.  I determined I would study the procedures extensively and learn every nuance and be ready to answer any question that came my way.

But, then came the gossip/talk/criticism/complaints, whatever you want to call it about my “underlings”.  This was completely unfamiliar territory for me.  Gossip or even speaking in a negative way about anybody was very dissuaded in my household as a child.  It was sort of the old, “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all” kind of mentality that was employed in my childhood home.  So, this new side to this level of the corporation felt foreign to me and clashed with my core values.  So, needless to say, I struggled mightily with this aspect of the job.  I decided to approach it from a coaching perspective in which I would ask the “underling” about how things were going and then make suggestions about how things might go better, rather than make the person aware that people were talking about them behind their backs.  I’m not sure anything positive is gained by sharing the gossip information.

These tactics seemed to work for a while until I had to be the overseer of writers for a large new drug application (NDA) to the FDA.  Then all hell broke loose.  More to come on that later….