I’ve always been the type of person that can’t handle things when inefficiencies start suffocating me. I’m not sure if it’s my military training or how I was raised, but I have a tendency to try and find better ways to do things no matter where I’m at. I was at a mortgage company for some time after I returned from active duty with the military. It was a “mom and pop shop” where the husband and wife were owners and both worked in the office as well in different roles. There were about 9 loan officers, a few processors, a couple of admins, and a secretary. After I got used to the system there, I started to notice that some things didn’t make sense. I started to listen to the loan processors who would complain about the majority of the loan officers who would submit incomplete files and therefore cause them more work. I empathized with them because if they were doing more work on someone else’s files, mine were getting ignored. There were other things as well that bothered me such as phone schedules, training, how we had to purchase our own software for mortgage pricing, etc. I brought up some of these concerns to the owners, but my concerns fell on deaf ears. The more the concerns were ignored, the more that people in the office became frustrated, which frustrated me even more.
The warrior in me felt the need to give a voice to the voiceless. “When faced with danger, the warrior attacks” (PSU WC, 2015, p. 8). Now, I’m being a little dramatic, but nonetheless, I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt confident that if I imposed my will enough on the owners, I could get them to see things my way and make the changes necessary to make the business more efficient (PSU WC, 2015). So I started to write a proposal on the changes needing to be made in the business to make things more efficient and how I would be the person to change it. One page turned into two and before I knew it, I had an eight-page proposal on how I could change things for the better. I was confident that I would be taken seriously and that I would be put in a position to enact these changes.
I was disappointed to see my proposal get put on the back-burner. I waited for what seemed like months for the owners to get around to looking at it. When I finally got an invite to have a sit down discussion about it, I kind of already felt like things weren’t going to go well. However, a big part of me doesn’t let me feel like that for long and my confidence shortly returned. The male owner gave me a rundown on my proposal and told me that I had a lot of good points in the proposal that would increase efficiencies. I started to hear more positive things about my proposal and was starting to feel like my hard work paid off. Then, like I was in some sort of TV show or movie, he said that we needed someone who could help implement these changes…but that person wasn’t going to be me. I immediately heard the record scratching noise in my head…you know, the one where the music just comes to screeching halt?
Fast-forward to a few months later and the same people that were upset prior to my proposal about the inefficiencies are still upset…about the same things. These are the same things that this person was supposed to help fix. Well, here comes the warrior again. Except this time would spell my last days with the company. I put together a team of people in the office that would go along with my plan. The plan was that within a small group, we would try things my way for a period of time and then I would present our results to the owners to prove my way was better. I sent an e-mail to my team recapping our private conversations and that we were going to meet in the office on a Saturday morning to finalize the details. Well, the male owner was walking past someone’s desk one day and my e-mail was up and that person was reading it. I didn’t know this at the time, so when I got called in the office one day, I thought nothing of it. Long story short (if that’s possible at this point), they started tearing into me about being disrespectful and ungrateful. I didn’t know what was going on at that point yet, but then they started repeating some things from the e-mail, which then I immediately knew what was going on. Already on the desk turned over were my separation papers. They had enough of me “going against the grain” and paying more attention to matters that were not my job.
Reading this lesson, I was reminded of this experience and how I wish I were more like a magician. I wish I could adapt more to my surroundings and then urge my team to do the same (PSU WC, 2015). Once I was turned down, if I was as good a leader as I thought I was, I should have supported the person they chose and tried to help get others on board. I believe that would have showcased better leadership instead of me forcing my will on the owners. I displayed the behaviors of a productive narcissist in this example, as I was not able to satisfy others that had their own vision (Northouse, 2013). I am a risk-taker and as such, the results can either be wonderful or disastrous (Northouse, 2013). We all know which one applies to my story.
Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
PSU WC, 2015. Lesson 3: Psychodynamic Approach.