Keeping it in perspective

Sometimes we just need to keep issues in perspective.

A few years back, I was sitting in an Executive Committee board meeting at 7 a.m. for an organization that specialized in healthcare and education for at-risk youth and families.

Not unusual, the meeting began with an announcement regarding an incident that had occurred in the wee hours the night before:  A student at one of our schools had witnessed the murder of his mother’s boyfriend on their way home from a carpeting job at 2 a.m. The incident occurred on the highway.

The student arrived at the school run by our organization early in the morning covered in dry blood. School was his designated safe place. They immediately began addressing the trauma.

Then, the call …

As I left the board meeting distressed, my phone started ringing in the car. It was the SVP at my Corporate job. When I answered, she exploded, “Joe Smith’s name is not spelled correctly on his nametag for today’s executive leadership development training.” She continued, “You really need to put Ella on warning for her mistakes. My boss, Maude, wants her fired.”  

I thought for a moment about how I would respond. 

First a little background information:

• Ella was a recent college graduate who had joined our team as a Leadership Development Coordinator. While awesome at the strategic tasks aligned with her position, she often made spelling errors and other simple mistakes. She was well-liked by the staff and another manager even approached me to “poach” her from my team.
• It was 8:30 a.m. and the leadership program was scheduled to begin at noon. There was plenty of time to correct the misspelling for the program kick off.

Next, the response …

I began, “Hello Brenda, I just attended a board meeting …” 

I proceeded to tell the SVP about the student witnessing the murder. I was not sure what type of response I would receive. Would it be empathetic or a myopic and self-serving clap back? (I have encountered both in the past.} Fortunately, the response was empathetic. 

The SVP, a bit embarrassed, responded, “Well thank you for grounding me in reality. I am so sorry to hear this news. It really puts life into perspective.”

We chatted for a few minutes about the tragedy, and then I told her I would address the nametag correction with Ella as soon as possible and insist on a total review to ensure there were no additional mistakes. I explained to Brenda that the root cause of the misspellings was largely due to an outdated list generated by an HRIS glitch that needed to be resolved. She said she would expedite the request with IT.

Evaluating how to react

I had contemplated not even telling the SVP about what I had learned that morning and just address the nametag scandal. I’m glad I shared that information with her. I learned more about her character, and also let her know I had a lot on my mind that I was processing that morning. We also outed the root cause of the issue, and it eventually got addressed.

Don’t be mistaken – I strive for high standards and excellence in my work. I possess a B.A. in Journalism and misspellings and typos cause me great grief! The point is that before you leap into creating a typo crisis, ask yourself, “What else might be going on at this time. Is this really serious?”

A neighbor’s leaf bag might be parked on your lawn, a hair appointment might get cancelled from time to time, but those are the kinds of things that can easily be remedied. Keeping problems in perspective helps us to balance minor and serious situations in our lives. Not everything needs to be a crisis!

We want to hear from you. Please share a time when you prioritized multiple issues to gain balance in your day-to-day life in the Comments section.