New Staff and How They are Perceived by Others

I really got my plates full this month - with work. For the past few days I have been smoothening out some details on the Service Excellence programme which I'm running for peeps at my workplace. Talk about challenges, at the same time we're supposed to draft 2006 projects. This is where I'm struggling like a novice because you're supposed to put in some budget figures into your plans and being new is not helping me at all. I really had to dig previous budget history. Thank god I'm the shameless type who keeps asking for more info from my colleague. Hope she's not fed-up or exasperated. Eh... are these words the same?

Anyways god bless her for I truly will be clueless if it wasn't for her help.

There's an SQC kick-start meeting tomorrow morning and I'm already in one of its working committees. Later in the afternoon we're off to MCYS to do build some networking with the Organisational Excellence (OE) folks there. Can't wait for this, really. Then much much later in the afternoon, a session with the head honcho for our Extra-Ordinary tasks. The last time I heard mine were changed. Good grief.

I got a feeling the head honcho will question us newbies if we had made a real effort to know the staffs here. A few days ago someone actually feedback to him that 'a particular someone' had experienced an unpleasant moment with one of the newer staffs. Apparently that incident got the whole lot of us labelled as arrogant, smart-aleck and 'keeping to ourselves' bunch. Urgghh... that's nasty. After all the energy and time I spent working on committees, attending other departments' events and even volunteering my services - all of these may come to nought by such perceived understanding.

But that's the nature of feedback for you. Imagine going about your business without anyone ever telling if you're doing a good or bad job. The thing is, even if that feedback wasn't directed at me, I'd still think it didn't address the situational issue that may have imbued the incident as unpleasant.

My two-cents worth as a OE dude, - feedback is good, but let's not jump to conclusion. Let's find out the truth. Let's talk.