A Confession

 

Here’s how a true story of failure begins:

For a long time in my career, I believed in Team. Celebrating wins. Tough conversations when needed. To bring out the best in everyone on that team, honesty is important. To bring you (the viewer) best content, team members have to be open and respect one another.  I fought for stories I thought we should be telling. I hoped that work would be completed at least an hour before we went on air so I could understand the stories.  I cringed when I saw people not giving enough. I spoke out when I knew that they could do better. There are times that this served the team I worked on well and bonds were formed that made us thick as thieves, we had each others backs and your back too. And there are other times that my honesty and passion fell on deaf, or even worse, uncaring ears.

I’m Catholic.  So what you’re hearing and seeing from today’s Challenge (the main picture on the main page) comes from a place where confession is serious business. And faith in something good coming out of it is that much more important.

It’s not that I don’t believe in Team anymore, but it was my mistake to believe that everyone is invested the same way at my last job. It was a failure on my part.  Some ideal belief that everyone on a team wants to work towards the same goal.  And I’ve had to decide how to handle it when I encounter that circumstance again.  Because it was a failure on my part.

The Lesson:  don’t speak out, off the cuff, without a good understanding of everyone at the table and their perspectives. Or agendas. Everyone works in this world through their own pair of glasses.  And you’re not going to get anywhere by trying to take them off. Sometimes it won’t even do any good for you to ask them to change their frames for a moment.

I made the mistake of speaking out and trusting that I could be honest with a couple people.  They turned it around on me, to move their own agenda forward.  I never suspected in a million years that being honest and wanting the best product would cost me and my family. And it did, dearly. To boot… and what even hurt me more… they didn’t even care about what they did. Never asked after me or my children.  You would think that caring and wanting the best product was equal to committing a crime in their book.

I will never understand.

The lesson is a hard one. For something to be the best it can be, you want to give all of yourself.  But some people can’t take that openness. Some people could care less about you and your opinion. Some people will use you to get what they want, and they don’t give one care about your heart and passion.

It’s crushing.

But the lesson has to be learned.  And we have to grow from it.  And we must know our own value and why we refuse to be treated that way again or let others stand and be treated the same way.

It’s shameful.  What I saw.  There is nothing I can do about it now.  But learn from it.