Professional - work and friendship

Professional... this is a very powerful word, at least it is to me in this recent time. I find it very useful especially when handling people at work, be it my superior or my subordinate.

All this while I'd made it clear, that no matter how friendly or how close we are, when it comes to work, it's work. If you should be reprimanded, you will. But as I am a normal human being, at times I do try to avoid this if I can, so yes, you can say that I do practise some favoritism at times.

But during this period, I really can't stand the way a staff works. She is very experienced and I respect her for her willingness to share with us whenever enquired. However, the laidback culture in which she is accustomed to... that's the straw which breaks the camel's back.

I have been handling flour portfolio all this while until early of this year when I was instructed to take care of the feed portfolio and I knew trouble will be brewing then because I can never accept the way Feed Lab works. Too laidback and when there is a seasoned staff there, you should know just how hard it is to change the laidback mindset.

As a supervisor, if I give you a task, I will assume that you should take charge and if you delegate it to your staff, it's your duty to follow up with them and report to me the progress. Instead, I am the one who need to follow up with her from time to time.

There was this one fine day when I couldn't take it anymore and lashed out at her, giving a strong distress signal that she should help me to follow the deadline given. I haven't even go into detail yet. The reason she gave me was too lousy that I didn't even bother to stay longer to listen to her.

But then all hell breaks loose. This staff has very good heart and I treat her like my mom at work. But one thing bad is that she keep things very personal and can be quite small-hearted at times. Which I knew for sure that I will land myself into trouble.

These few days, she didn't bother to talk to me (which is a good thing because she actually concentrated more on her work rather than walk around the lab chatting. On normal days, even with chatting she still did her job, but hey, who are we bluffing right? When you talk while work, surely the efficiency drops somehow) and banged things around the Lab as if the whole world is deaf.

And I having my own ego (and coincidentally it was early of the month, so busying myself with several reports to be done), didn't even bother about that. Seriously she needs to improve her management skill and if you expect me to go and pamper you, sorry! JS told me we should make them feel welcomed, then only they will willingly do the things we want.

I agree with him but sometimes, there is this thing called limit. Once or twice I can keep quiet but it had been repeated over and over again, so...sorry lah! I don't really have a good EQ and I do think that I am being more than good to withstand this. Hey, I mean, where is your respect?

If you can't be professional about it, then suit you. It is always better if you can mingle well with colleagues but if people take work matters personally, then sorry to say that you can have your way and I will have my way. It's a pity that it had to be this way.

That's about subordinate. Talking about superior, there was a time when I felt that he was not doing much to protect his own staff especially when dealing with external parties. There was even some back-stabbing involved. I was clearly disappointed and felt so demotivated. But KK reminded me of this word, PROFESSIONALISM.

It is this word which reminds me not to give up when I felt that my passion, full-hearted effort and motivation got challenged. It is tough when you don't have people to motivate you. Of course I am at fault because I no longer motivate my staff as well. I might not be giving them a very conducive working environment in terms of words of encouragement. No matter what, I need to learn and remind myself to be professional.

Don't ask me what do I mean by professional. But to me, it means business means business, personal means personal. And if a situation renders you to be very calm despite the most turbulent storm, so be it. So define professional in your own term.