I learned a very good lesson at work today about building relationships. The big client that we signed on (that I mentioned I'm working with) requires us to have strong relationships in the design/ innovation sector and as a company, we have a limited reach in that sector. This had been on my mind for a few days and because I wasn't able to get time with my boss to talk about this, this issue made me nervous and led to a small fuck-up on a client call today. My boss let me make it - in hindsight, I'm thankful that he lets me make my own mistakes and learn from them. Any other boss would have jumped into the situation and turned it around. Instead, he let me flap around like a fish out of water for a bit so I knew exactly what it was that I went rogue and off-script on. After the call, he expressed his concern and spent twenty minutes or so hearing my frustrations and challenges with this project. He worked with me one by one and gave me a proper direction to enable me to solve these problems. (Is it bad to sometimes liken your boss to a teacher or a father-figure?) He gives me credit too, in that, I CRAVE for feedback. I'm obsessed with the desire to make myself better and I act on most feedback I receive. So we work extremely well together. We've got good rhythm.
It's sad that I'm more of a pessimist than I thought I was. My first reaction to a new challenge or a new hurdle is intimidation and a minor freak-out. I begin to think of all the ways I can fuck it up. (new friendships as well) My boss, (as much as he frustrates me sometimes!) has worked me so patiently to help me become a more confident person. Confidence - that's all there is to anything. I've come to realize that confidence and persuasion are the only two skills I need to be successful in my business. Everything else is bollocks.
Anyways, coming back to the relationship piece. My boss told me how to skillfully open those doors. My client is my gold card and he said, there is not a single person that won't pick up the phone when I call them about this client. It's so easy to maintain a fine line between professional and personal relationships -- they are all relationships after all. And my boss is right, this is an investment that will pay dividends for the rest of my life. (and my career) He's so good at initiating and maintaining relationships. I felt inspired after our meeting and ordered elegant cream Thank you notes on a thick and sophisticated card stock from Crane. I wrote out ten thank you notes to the folks that have recently played a role in my professional projects.
I read this quote earlier this week and it's defining my current professional stage.
"The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools." - Thucydides
This job has taught me how to both a scholar and a warrior. Strategy and execution. Thinking and do-ing. I get heart palpitations some nights when I think of the impending career move and wonder if I will have a boss like M where my learning will continue. I'm sad on other accounts as well, some superficial. I work on the coolest street in Manhattan. It's a tiny cobble-stoned (YES! One of the only few cobblestoned streets remaining in NYC) in Soho. Ricky Martin, Naomi Watts, Leiv Schriber, Tyra Banks - these are my neighbors on this street. And I don't even raise a brow at the other celebrities that hang out on my street or the hood' cafe. The other day when I met my friend, Nicole Ritchie was sitting at the table next to me. My colleague and friend S. randomly bumps into the likes of Anne Hathway and Beyonce when stepping out for lunch. Patricia Field's boutique (Designer for Sex and the City) is a block from my office ;(
I've gotten used to a certain glamor that this neighborhood affords.
Ian Schrager (of the Studio 54 fame) built a huge green-metal building that is simultaneously a thing of beauty and a monstrosity right next to ours. A friend had commented how this building reminded him of a cage for dinosaurs. And every morning when I walk to work, there is a trio of Asian photographs from some cool Japanese magazine (whose name I cannot pronounce) taking photographs of the building or orchestrating a photo-shoot with a enviously skinny model in front of the building. Heck, they even transported a snow-white stallion one bright Tuesday morning for a shoot.
My office building houses a bunch of creative agencies and a modeling agency. It's commonplace for me now to stand next to a six feet glamazon while waiting for the elevators, feeling significantly fat, out of place, yet smug in the knowledge that my work life is so incredibly interesting and fun. A crazy and half-senile artist lives on the top-most floor of my building. We know he's been in the elevator when it's stinking of cigar smoke. The other creative agency that's in my building has a bunch of Swedish and English expats working there. Because we have just one elevator in the building, lunch-time is a a cacophony of various accents going up and down the elevator, stopping briefly on the third floor to drop or pick up a colleague.
The point is - my building, my street, my neighborhood is full of characters. And I'm already missing this. Plus, my boss is somewhat of a celebrity in the art worlds and our office is always buzzing with European and local American street artists and indie film-makers stopping by to meet with M and his wife. The serene, blue-loft like space of my office has become my second home. My colleagues have become such close friends and the music... sigh. Having Sirius Satellite Radio on 14 hours a day has improved and reinvigorated my interest in music. So much to give up.
I don't give it enough credit but a few years down the road when I'm writing a professional book, there will be chapter dedicated to my early influences. Being exposed to art, photography, high-brow culture and even a bit of glamor, has molded my thinking and elevated my own sense of self. I've worked on this street, in this hood for over three years. It'll be like breaking up when I leave. Even my local take-out food guy knows me and that I like the Vegan Mediterrnean Sandwich, extra spicy :(
But I can sense a different kind of change seeping into my life. A change, for which I feel ready. I have to take a leap of faith and trust that my learning will continue (and if I can be hopeful) accelerate in a new place with new people around me. Also, since this change has not been driven by any other reason than the desire for career advancement (Unlike my past jobs - where the reasons have been everything from the desire to be in NYC, to work for a CEO, to have a cooler-sounding title!) it makes me feel secure in my knowledge that I'm being analytical and logical about my next move. It is going to be a few months before that happens, but in my gut, I know its coming.
This post has become a litany on my work life. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't work. I was chatting with my doctor cousin the other day. They are moving into the burbs next year. Doing the whole American dream you know - 5 bedroom mansion, two cars, a pool and private school for the girls. The works. I'm happy for them but I shuddered. I won't survive in suburbia. I feed off the energy in the city. It used to scare me that as I grow older, I'll want the suburbia. But when I was walking to work earlier this week, I felt comforted. R and I have never harbored such dreams. Never wanted the suburbia and at our ages now, what we want from life is pretty clear. Granted, once we start thinking of family, it might force us to re-think our decisions. But, I grew up in an incredibly tiny house. And went to strictly ok schools. I turned out ok. Maybe the kids will too?
Who knows.
This post is too long now. Headache.
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