From Colleague to Ex-Colleague

Today I am feeling slightly down. My colleague is leaving us soon, most likely by early July she will go over to the new company. I didn't retain her as I felt that she will have better opportunity there. Time for her to grow as well. For someone like her who needs some pushing, that new company will hopefully manage to find her true potential.

My style is independent working style. I do practise some control, in fact sometimes I think I might micro-manage too much in earlier days, back when I still have some free time. Nowadays, I practically leave it to my subordinates and only sound them when I can't stand their way of working. Because I fear that I might be exerting too much pressure on them.

But when I talked to my colleague just now, I realised that I had been letting them loose for too long. It's time for me to use up my time to manage them again. Otherwise I will be the one having headache later. Better spend some time now to put things straight rather than later scrambling to put things in one piece. Once my colleague tendered her resignation officially, I will need to restructure my Lab organisation temporarily.

Just this month alone, I will have 3 colleagues leaving our organisation. FL from Production who will jump ship to competitor organisation, SK who will transfer to Marketing and YT who will change totally to new field to new company, M. All of a sudden, I realised that I had been with this organisation for 4 years to be exact. But seeing colleagues going off one by one, I felt a sudden emptiness within me.

One more is going to retire soon. I will definitely miss all of them a lot. Only those who has known me since day one are close to me. The new staff usually dare not approach me much. My face is too serious and fierce I guess. Perhaps I need to spend more time socialising. Sacrificing a little bit of time to make everyone feel comfortable in my presence.

I came across this quote in FB today and quite like it:

"A good life is when you assume nothing, do more, need less, smile often, dream big, laugh a lot and realise how blessed you are."

I should complain less and put thoughts into action. But to be fair, come this July I will really be short-handed. With the original 3 executives running the Lab, it will be 2 since my colleague is resigning. After the first week, it will be only me because my other colleague is going off to Bangkok for cookie training. I have 2 practical trainees joining, internal audit, baking troubleshooting and the list goes on...All the best to myself and my colleague for her new venture. I know she can do it!