A Lenten Gift

I had great plans for Ash Wednesday. I was going to take off work, even had the vacation time approved by my boss, who is currently out of town. I planned to spend the morning at the St. Francis Retreat Center where Days of Lenten Recollection are offered every Wednesday during Lent. It has been such an overwhelmingly stressful couple of months that a day off at the retreat center seemed like a wonderful gift to myself. I went to bed, happily ready to start dreaming about a day of peace, with no fires to put out, no high visibility projects to shepherd through obstacle courses, and no static-filled environment, intruding into the silence I often desperately seek in vain for conversation with God.

I had difficulty falling asleep Tuesday evening (actually, early Wednesday morning), however. I felt tugged toward email even though I had read the last incoming missive of the day only a half-hour earlier and had closed down the computer. Sleepily, I pushed the on button. Oh, no! There was a slate of new email from work! After midnight?! I had better read it. With a bit of trepidation, I looked at the latest note. It came from our Washington office and demanded to know why a planned business trip from one of my subordinates had been cancelled. Cancelled? I had not cancelled it. It was essential that she be in Washington Thursday afternoon. I looked at the next note. It was from a senior manager, who had been out sick, and the supervisor of the employee with the cancelled trip. He said he would come in to work on Wednesday, sick or not, and wanted to know why I had cancelled this important trip. Cancelled? I had not cancelled it. Now I was very awake! I started reading through a rash of messages between the employee and the Washington office. After wending my way through one particular thread, I found what I was looking for: a comment from her to him that I had cancelled the trip. What? Cancelled? I had not cancelled her trip. So much for the rest of the night. I sent notes to my assistant and the assistant to the senior manager, asking if they had authorized trip cancellation. I had to wait until 6 in the morning to get their negative response. I also wrote to the senior manager and suggested that he not come in if he were sick. (He came in.)

I tumbled into bed around 4, planning to get up at 6 to find out if there were any responses. So much for taking Wednesday off. I made plans to go to work. There was no alternative, especially since that would be my last day before leaving for Alaska.

I got up early, took a shortened period of time for prayer, and then checked the email. The negative responses were not enlightening. I had to get to work and get the employee on the plane. Or did I? I had planned to go to the Ash Wednesday Mass at the retreat center, but since I could not go there after all, I had changed those plans to attend the Spanish Mass in the evening. However, Fr. Ed was offering an early morning Mass in English. I would be considerably late to work were I to go to it. However, I needed more than my shortened prayer time, so I put aside my time-essential concern over the employee with the cancelled trip, sent a note to the assistant senior manager re getting her on a plane somehow, and informed him and my assistant that I would be in, but late. Then I went to Mass, where I found peace, prayed for wisdom, received the ashes, and left for work.

I really did need wisdom because the senior manager had been failing at one high visibility project after another, not getting the people hired that we needed, and not supervising well the people he had. He has talent and is dedicated. He is also very loyal to me and does anything I ask of him. The problem is that he did not get his second-level set of supervisors hired in a timely fashion -- we do not yet have them. So, he has to supervise by himself all the new projects, and he simply does not have time. Last week, I pressed him to fill behind his assistant manager who is leaving soon for another position. He said that he wanted to wait and see if an incoming intern could do the job. (No!) At the time, my arguments held no sway, and I left his office frustrated. I remained frustrated until Monday, when the senior manager was out ill and I found him an assistant, someone I could promote from another division who could start immediately. I had already talked to that other person and his supervisor, and the position had been accepted. I have never gone around a senior manager and hired someone for her or him before. Now I had to break the news to the senior manager -- along with trying to resolve the dilemma of the cancelled trip and deal with an employee who took undelegated authority upon herself to cancel her own trip. Oh, Lord! I needed help!

I am so glad I went to Mass. My frustrations melted away. I found enough inner peace that I could listen. I needed to listen.

"How do I handle this?" I asked, more to myself than anything else. This manager is very sensitive, and if all the issues I had to discuss with him (there were others beyond just the cancelled trip and the new assistant manager) were not handled well, I could end up with more problems, not fewer, and a very unhappy and offended senior manager.

"Oh, Lord," I repeated, "How do I handle this?"

And then I heard: "with kindness, gently." Now those are not my strongest traits, but at least I had a direction in which to work.

When I got to work, nothing had been done about the cancelled trip, so I accompanied the assistant manager to talk to the employee who needed to go to Washington. To make a long story short, she has now reached Washington. We ticketed and planed her within minutes.

Then the senior manager came in, and it was time to confess my "sins" to him. I said a quick prayer for that gentleness that is not second nature to me and dove through his door. I could tell that he was hurting -- overwhelmed, sick, feeling like he had failed me and the organization, and pretty much at wit's end. There was no defensiveness. I asked about his health and talked about the other problems, looking for some solutions. Then I broached the topic of the new assistant manager, telling him that I had done something that he might not like but that I had done for him, to rescue him from his own willingness to take on too much with too little help. When I pronounced the name of the new assistant manager, the senior manager broke out in a big smile.

"I am so pleased," he said. "That is the perfect person. I can't believe he agreed. I would have been hesitant to approach him. Thank you!"

Wow! I floated back to my office (maybe I actually took a little skip). I had a dental appointment and had to leave in just a few minutes, but decided to do a final check of email before leaving for the day. There was an enote from an employee in Texas. She is very ill and had run out of sick leave. I had sent out a note to all 400 employees, asking anyone who could afford to do so to join me in donating some of our vacation time to her so that she would not be without income. People have been donating. She had found out about it, and wrote the following to me:

"Since you came, I have felt that we are just one big family. Big and spread out around the world, but supportive of each other. Today that feeling has been confirmed as reality. Thank you!"

I got up this morning, feeling discouraged. I came home after work, feeling elated. Thanks to the guidance of God, the right words somehow came to me at the right time, my bull-in-a-china-shop directness was somehow blunted, the people I touched were affected positively, and I realized that I really love my job, a job that God insisted I take and keep. (I wrote a post about that once.)

I did not get my planned gift to myself today: a morning at the retreat center. I got something better: happy employees, thanks to divine help. Thank You, God, for my gift today!