Thinks creatively, he said. What exactly does that mean? How can you tell if someone is thinking creatively? Does their forehead glow a certain color? And if we’re going to use that as a test for hiring new employees, how can we test their ability to think creatively in an interview setting? Ask them to answer the questions through interpretative dance? Gerald said we need to dump all this junk and start focusing on observable behaviors. After all, we didn’t want people who could describe themselves as creative thinkers. We wanted people who could be observed applying creative solutions in difficult situations.
Despite his patronizing tone, he actually made a lot of sense. We spent a few more minutes brainstorming in this new direction—Michael back in his glory and stationed like a tactical wing commander beside his flipchart, but only about half of our ideas met Gerald’s rigid criteria. Someone would say “stays organized” and Gerald would counter with “keeps an orderly workspace.” Another would say “pursues professional development” and Gerald would correct it with “belongs to a professional society.” Michael bristled every time he did this, but everyone could see that Gerald was right, and that he was making our list better by pushing things in a direction they needed to go.
Whether it was Gerald’s condescending attitude and our own inability to swim in the depths he sought, our brainstorming died a fairly quick and natural death. Looking at the list we had on the flipchart—a mishmash of descriptions and behaviors with little rhyme or reason to them—I found myself unsatisfied with the output. I suggested that we all keep thinking about it, focusing on things that are directly observable and sending the ideas back to me over the next week via email. While the iron was hot I asked everyone to pull out their calendars and we set a time for a follow-up discussion.
Back in my office I taped our single sheet of flipchart paper to the wall and reflected on the progress we had made. Part of me thought about reporting to Mary—to give her an update on what had happened and get her thoughts on how to proceed—but eventually I decided against it. We didn’t have much to show for our efforts, true, but looking at Michael’s sloppy block printing and thinking about the way I had managed to get Gerald engaged in the discussion, I felt like something was beginning to build beneath the surface—something profound, in its own way—and I didn’t want Mary to kill it before we could give it life.
I evidently wasn’t the only one on whom the meeting had made an impression. Shortly after it ended I received a visit from Michael. He came in, closed the door, and silently made his way to the sole visitor’s chair in my tiny office—a cheap, molded plastic thing like you might see in a high school cafeteria. I had to turn in my desk chair to face him, and when I did our knees were almost touching.
“Why is Gerald such an asshole?”
I shrugged. It was one of those questions Michael had a knack for asking—one whose answer contained no wisdom. Michael was never interested in learning anything, only in reinforcing his own myopic view of the world around him.
“He’s old,” I replied jokingly. “He can’t help it. If he didn’t have this job he’d probably be shambling around the park talking to himself.”
Michael did not appear amused. “I’m serious, Alan. He was disruptive in that meeting. And he treated everyone with disrespect. You should’ve called him out for it.”
That was another of Michael’s tiresome habits, offering advice when none was sought.
“It’s all right, Michael. I didn’t mind. I want people to challenge my ideas. You do it all the time. Gerald just does it with less tact.”
“Well, I’m tired of his bullshit,” Michael said bitterly, his anger rising quickly and uncontrolled to the surface. “He’s a smug son of a bitch and he treats everyone like they’re pieces of human garbage. He’s got no right to do that. Just because Mary lured him away from that Fortune 500 company he came from, he thinks he’s untouchable and can treat everyone else like shit. He doesn’t know half as much as he thinks he does.”
When Michael was angry he usually swore a great deal, and would go on swearing for as long as you let him, never seeming to get any satisfaction out of the curse words.
“Didn’t his suggestion make sense?” I asked.
Michael looked at me angrily, clearly unwilling to give his adversary any credit. “He didn’t have to talk to us the way he did. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m going to speak to him. He owes us a fucking apology.”
“Good luck with that,” I said, knowing that Michael would do no such thing and that, if he did, Gerald was likely to punch him in the nose, bulging biceps be damned.
I saw some movement through the glass pane in my door and looked up to see Bethany standing there. Needing a break from Michael I waved her inside. She cracked open the door and poked her head in.
“Am I interrupting?”
“Not at all. Come on in.”
Michael gave me a hurt look, almost as if I had invited a more popular girl to sit next to me at the lunch table, but I knew he wouldn’t say anything about it. Not to me, at least. Someone else, I knew, would get a full dose of his fury later.
Bethany came in and shut the door. There wasn’t a third chair for her so both Michael and I stood.
“Did you come to complain about Gerald, too?” Michael asked.
“What?” Bethany said.
“Gerald,” Michael said. “You know, Mister King Shit. The one who knows more than everyone else combined?”
Bethany gave me a confused look.
I shook my head. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just upset that Gerald stole the meeting away from me before he could.”
I meant it as a joke, but when I saw Michael turn purple I knew I had stepped over the line. He sputtered a few times, trying to find the words to express himself, but eventually gave up and stormed out of the room. I hurried after him, not to catch him but just to keep him from slamming the door. I was only partially successful.
“What was that all about?”
I sighed and motioned for her to take a seat. “Nothing. Or exactly what I just said, but I guess I shouldn’t have said it so bluntly.”
“Do you want to go talk to him?”
“No,” I said as we both sat down. “I’ll apologize later. I’d rather give him some time to calm down first.”
“Well, I don’t think either Gerald or Michael stole that meeting away from you. I think you ran it just fine.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean it. I’m really excited about this project and I’m glad you’re in charge of it, Alan. I really like the things you said about changing the culture of the company. I want to help in any way I can.”
“Well, I appreciate that,” I said. “I think the best thing we can all do right now is come up with some observable behaviors that describe the kind of person we’re looking for.”
Bethany nodded. “I agree. I’m going to give it some thought tonight and bring you my best ideas in the morning.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah,” Bethany said. “It’s my night off. One night a week David takes care of feeding Parker and putting him to bed so I can have some time away. I usually go out with some friends or go read a book in a coffee shop, but I’d rather work on this.”
At the mention of her husband I glanced down at her wedding ring, a modest silver band with two inlaid diamonds and a center stone too small for the prongs that surrounded it. They had been married less than three years and their baby, Parker, had been born about six months ago. Parker had gone straight into daycare as soon as they would take him so Bethany could come back to work—the same daycare, despite the cost, that Mary had sent her kids to.
“Don’t do that,” I told her. “Go out and have fun like you normally do. I’m giving everybody a week to get their ideas in. You don’t need to spend your free time on this.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” Bethany said. “I really don’t. I could use a break from my friends. And this is important. I want to make sure we do this right.”
I nodded. I was hoping for some enthusiasm around this project, but this felt a little like overkill. Bethany was known in the company for her eagerness to please, always looking for an opportunity to impress the next rung up the ladder. It was probably one of the reasons she had climbed so far at such a young age. She was not yet thirty.
“Maybe once all the comments are in, you and I could sit down and go through them?”
Bethany’s tone was innocent—overly so, I thought. I didn’t respond verbally to her suggestion but my skeptical thoughts must have shown on my face because she quickly started backpedaling.
“I mean, if you think you could use the help in organizing them. There’s sure to be a lot of different ideas. I’m just interested in helping any way I can.”
I let a couple of heartbeats go by. “I’ll let you know,” I said.
“Okay,” she said cheerfully, standing up and evidently deciding to depart before she dug herself in any deeper. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then.”
I watched her depart, self-consciously observing her slim frame, and found myself thinking about how Jenny had never entirely lost the pregnancy weight she had gained with Jacob. They say breast-feeding is supposed to help women slim down after delivery, but I’m not sure I believe it. Jenny exclusively nursed Jacob until he was eight months old—the boy never deigned to take a bottle from me—but she was unable to shed those extra pounds. And yet the office seemed filled with young professional women like Bethany, who were able to step back into their size six business skirts the day they returned to work, after ardently bottle feeding their babies for six weeks to make sure they were ready for daycare.
Suddenly, the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Alan?”
“Yes.”
“Alan, this is Eleanor Rumford. How are you today?”
Eleanor Rumford. The woman next in line to chair the board of directors of the client I worked for. I had last seen her at the VIP meeting I had attended, when we sat at the same banquet table together and I had watched Mary fawn over her and tell her how right she was. Distracted by the events of the day, I couldn’t imagine why she was calling me.
“I’m fine, Eleanor. How are you?”
“Good. I was just sitting here reviewing the final program proof Susan had sent me and I thought I should give you a call.”
Of course. Our national education conference was coming up in a few weeks, and the proof she was referring to was a catalog that listed all the presentations and speakers for that event. Eleanor was chairing the planning committee and had been working closely with Susan on those details prior to her resignation.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m glad you did,” trying to sound as if I had been intending to call her myself. “How’s it looking?”
“Not very well. The document is riddled with mistakes.”
“Really?” I said, trying to mask my surprise. Susan had shown me the program before sending it to Eleanor. I hadn’t proofread every page, but thought it had been in pretty good shape.
“Yes, really. There are mistakes here that I asked to have corrected in the last draft. And there are also entirely new mistakes in areas that I had previously reviewed and approved. It takes a great deal of my time to review this material. I need to be able to trust that my edits will be made correctly and that pages which have been approved will not be tampered with. Can you understand my concern?”
“Yes, absolutely,” I said, my mind racing and wondering how things could have gone so far afield. But it was clear from Eleanor’s terseness that my primary focus now had to be on confidence building. “Can you email me your list of corrections? I’m sure there’s still time to fix things before the program goes to the printer.”
There was an odd silence on the other end of the line—or not so much a silence as a pregnant pause in which a deep exhalation of breath could be heard.
“There are really too many corrections for me to type them up in an email. I’ve marked the pages Susan sent me with my red pen. I’m overnighting them to you so you can see exactly what needs to be corrected.”
“That’ll work, too,” I said quickly. “Do you want our FedEx account number?” I had learned long ago that when something was broken it was best to take as much of the repair cost as you could off the customer.
“No,” Eleanor said. “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. Look, Alan,” she said, softening her tone just a smidge, as if recognizing I wasn’t going to climb into the trap unless there was something sweet inside. “I know that Susan left you in a bit of a lurch, but these items simply must be attended to. I need you to take personal responsibility for this. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, of course,” I said with as much false enthusiasm as I could muster. “I would be happy to. I’m sorry things got so messed up, but I’ll get them right before the conference begins.”
“I know you will. There’s a lot riding on this conference.”
“There certainly is.”
The line clicked off and I held the telephone receiver in my hand for a few moments before putting it back in its cradle.
“There certainly is,” I said again to myself. “For her and me both.”
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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