Valence Bleed
I went into a meeting with a coworker expecting to have to talk about COE culture and to offer help with a doc on his plate.
Instead we spent 45 minutes working through his wife's cancer diagnosis, the changes in his relationship with his kids, the ways in which "the company's breakup with the product he helped write" is fuelling his sense of profound disrespect on the job, and his own projection of disappointment on others at work because of it.
Valence Bleed
The good news is that the process seems to have helped. I think I did a fairly reasonable job of helping him frame his work problems in a way that will help him see that even if he's technically right, his struggle to prove it is hurting him more than it's helping. I think I gave him a space in which he could simply be himself for a while, sitting with his emotions.
The bad news is that the paperwork still isn't done. But at least now he believes it's worth doing.
Valence Bleed
And in continuing crossovers, my "'women' at $COMPANY" affinity group lunch started with a chat on microaggressions and ended with an analysis of how late-stage capitalism prevents offices from becoming spaces in which people can actually seek real redress for misbehavior because doing so would require companies to themselves hold moral standards, which would in turn hurt their ability to make money by selling to market segments that oppose those values.
What frame am I really in?
