I recently completed my second L360, and one of the things I saw in the results was a need to work on relationship skills.
It is talking about personal skills with co-workers and clients, that sort of stuff. I think it is probably something deeper. I have never really been one to be the social life of the party. At large parties, I stick to smaller groups and have stayed near the outside of the crowd in case I needed to get away for a few minutes.
Friends, real friends, I have few. I always have been that way, all the way back as far as I can remember. I usually have a core group of people of whom I trust and within that group sometimes emerges someone who I trust implicitly or better than that I feel as if they are a brother or sister that I never had. If you were lucky enough to be one of those people you saw all sides of me, you knew me, and I knew you. I was comfortable around you, told you anything and all the things that go with a close relationship like that.
If you weren’t that close to me, then you were a friend that I could count on as long as you were in that tight group I still was comfortable around you, just not as much as those few I just talked about. We would hang out, do stuff, play sports and all that sort of thing.
If you weren’t in one of those groups, you were either in acquaintances or random strangers. In the case of acquaintances I knew your name, we moved in and out of each other’s spheres of influence, gliding through each other’s circles, the occasional “hey, sup?” types of things as we passed by.
It’s not that I wasn’t willing to talk to you; it was more of like this:
At some point in my life, it slipped into my mind and rooted itself very deeply that certain things should “be” and other things should “possibly be”. I can’t explain it.
In personal relationships if you weren’t in those two inner circles you were immediately locked into a series of decisions. Should I spend an hour listening to this person, talk about stuff I know nothing about just because they (whatever), or should I spend that time studying, working, or some other thing that aligned with duty or responsibly.
Over many years that began to push me farther away from the outer circles. As I moved from place to place throughout my life, the inner circles started to diminish due to not seeing those people anymore and them getting on with their lives. I only recently was found by one of the oldest sets of close friends. He, his brothers, and one good friend and his brother were my first set of close friends. I was happy to see that he was still somewhat in touch with the others. I find myself afraid to try to reconnect with the others. With our lives so changed over the years, I wonder if they would expect the old me, the one not scarred by human events. So even though I am connected to the one via Facebook, I still haven’t connected to the others.
My coworkers who were on the L360, at least one or two of them said something that fell into the relationship category. In that case, other than a few you are closer to, do you want to know all about all of them or to have them know everything about you?
I spent more time on books, movies, and other things that don’t require lots of people. As you get older people get scattered by life, it is harder to get people together for activities when you’re older than it was when you are young.
A wise person once said, “things change, life is fluid.”
It was easier; it became more comfortable for me just to do things myself if I wanted to do them. That probably made things worse.
Two L360’s three years apart seem to indicate that my lack of connection with others as a flaw. In the last year, I have spent hundreds of hours working on being more social, attending more events, talking to people I don’t know well and trying to keep a conversation going for a while. For someone who is a pretty solid introvert, all that time is very taxing on my reserves. I leave those places with all those people, and I want to find somewhere to myself so I can recharge as best I can. I made an effort; I have had progress. I am no longer the person holding up the wall at parties; I am no longer the person buzzing around work events making sure everything is working properly.
After all this time, most of my coworkers see that I am not the same individual who started at this company, many of them came along later on in my work life. Even those who came along in the last four years have seen a difference. I still got blasted by some for not being authentic.
And it still isn’t enough apparently.
L360 =http://www.rightpath.com/products/leadership360.asp
Also did Rightpath 4 & 6 profiles
4 in 2011
6 in 2011 and 2013
[ What's in a Name? ] 