Today my office closed down, and we hiked up to Richmond for a big kick-off meeting. The meeting was rescheduled 3 times, so we were a little less than enthusiastic when it finally came about! What a way to start.

The Regional Vice President came up from his Carolina office to give us a motivational speech on where he wants us to be this year and how he wants us to accomplish these goals. We watched a video about Lance Armstrong and his bout with cancer, his recovery in life and his success. He then tried to make an analogy to the video and my company's defeats and near death and their recovery and how he hopes that we too will go on to win 4 Tour de France... or the equivalent in our company's terms.

My company has been through a lot of restructuring in the past two years. I'm not saying it wasn't needed, but they lost something that I believe is important in working with a team. They lost the personal touch. That was something that Lance had with his team that my company didn't take note of. They are farming out a method of sales and preaching team work, but don't actually practice what they teach. If they did, the RVP would know that the reason that one of the sales reps was crying when she watched Lance Armstrong battle cancer and come back to make those wins, is because she is overcoming the same disease and is still one of the best sales representatives that this company has.

Instead, he shows the video and points out that if Lance can do it, then we can do it, too. What he should have done, if he had known his team, is praise Vivian on her hard work and dedication to the company, keeping up her monthly quota and exceeding the goals they gave her while fighting a disease that takes millions of lives every year.

While I admire the way he can keep the attention of the room, I don't necessarily admire the way he went about getting his point across. While he was making examples of things that can change, I noticed a certain pattern of belittlement he had about him. He used fat people, smokers, and under educated people as examples of people who should change. Repeatedly. He is sitting in a room with at least 10 people who are overweight, 15 who are smokers and people who already don't feel that they have the best education. His message was to THINK BIG. Set big goals for your self and execute them. Don't let anyone stand in your way. I though it was ironic that his way of motivating people was to speak bad about them.

I'm not sure what I left the meeting with. Maybe a sense that this company has no more room for advancement in my field and that unless I want to become a sales person that I may need to look elsewhere.

I enjoy being a customer service representative. Everyone has times when they hate what they are doing, certain aspects of a job, whatever. I usually get over it pretty quickly and get back to the task at hand. I would work until late at night if they would let me. I did when I worked in Baltimore. They just go about accomplishing their goals here with half a heart. They want people to give 150%, but they need to have you out of the office by 5 so that they don't have to pay you overtime. They tell you to take initiative, but then when you come up with an idea or something that is feasible, the slap it down because they didn't think of it and it's not their way. It's a little discouraging and frankly I want something more.

I want to set goals (REALISTIC GOALS) for a team and then go about executing them with a contagious enthusiasm. The enthusiasm in our office is dead. That's another thing that I was left with from the meeting. I'm a pretty competitive person when involved in a contest, but I don't like what it makes me. In sales it would be a benefit, but they hire sales people without a competitive drive. In the meeting of 35 people, I only saw 5 people who had the drive. One was the manager and one was me and the others were the top three performers. The rest sat there without an enthusiastic bone in their body. Not saying anything, no comments, suggestions, nothing. Because they are afraid of rejection? Because they don't have type A personalities? Maybe a little of both. My point is that if they want a leading team, then need to hire leaders. Or they need to hire managers that aren't on power trips and beat down the ideas of their team members.

As I sit here typing this I am preparing a mental list of all the things I need to do before I can go on maternity leave. Much of these things are managerial. I gave up my management position when I left Baltimore. Because I am a leader I assume these tasks and my boss trusts that I will get them done. I don't have the same trust. I'm a little worried about what I will be coming back to in May.