Productivity With Purpose

I’d told Amy that I thought Ewan Knowles was an idiot; Amy communicated that to Ewan and he obviously took it personally, which shows what an idiot he really is.

Frankly, I don’t have a particularly high opinion of any of my co-workers. Ewan, as we know, is an idiot, Mark is a bully, Simone is lazy, Barbara is a hypochondriac (though she is about ninety, so she’s probably just sick a lot for real), Josh is a bore and Amy is, obviously, a snitch. And it’s tiring being the one who constantly carries the team.

Lucinda, our manager, tries to keep us working harmoniously by taking us off for regular team building days to, as she puts it, positively impact our performance and team dynamic. I’m not sure how learning to juggle or create the front page for a fake newspaper helps improve performance in compliance monitoring but I’m happy for a day out of the office and a free lunch. A couple of years ago Lucinda booked us all for an overnighter, but Barbara forgot her medications so had to leave early, Mark had too much wine over dinner and picked a fight with the hotel bartender and Simone and Ewan ended up snogging behind the hotel lobby pot plants. So, after that, we went back to just single day training events and nothing more was said about the snogging (though, to this day, I do keep a very close eye on the both of them every time we have after-work drinks).

During our recent away day, we were holding a so-called brainstorming sandbox session which was just another name for talking about what we do and how we could do it better. Perhaps fewer days on these mindless sessions and more time getting the job done might help? Anyway, Josh had just made a ridiculous suggestion about using different colours to differentiate the different levels of non-compliance and, to my surprise, there were some nods of agreement. I got quite annoyed by all this nonsense and said it was a stupid idea, as non-compliance is non-compliance and we should not be suggesting through colouring-in activities that some non-compliances were less significant than others. Ewan, obviously still smarting from being told I’d called him an idiot, then described me as negative and a drain on the mood of the room. I explained that I wasn’t being negative, I was being a realist and said his idea to reward staff with ‘candy credits’ for getting a positive compliance score was also ridiculous, because staff should be doing their jobs properly and getting positive compliance scores anyway.

Lucinda banged on the whiteboard with her marker and reminded us all that during ideation sessions no idea is stupid. By now I was on a roll and begged to differ. I said that was a fallacy because some ideas were not worthy of discussion so we would be wasting time discussing ludicrous things that shouldn’t even be suggested in the first place, such as Josh’s coloured ticks and Ewan’s Gummy Bear credit system. It all became a bit heated after that, and we had to take a time out to calm down.

As I jabbed my tea bag violently with a spoon, I seethed my frustration at Amy who was gesturing impatiently for me to hand her the semi-skimmed. She bit her lip, grabbed a Digestive and turned her back on me to talk to Barbara, which I thought was pretty rude. Over in the corner, Simone and Ewan were huddled together on the easy chairs, cradling their coffee mugs, and I noticed Simone patting Ewan on the shoulder with slightly more tenderness than the requisite level of support from a colleague. In fact it was perilously close to a hug, which is definitely not allowed according to our most recent HR training on physical boundaries.

But it seemed the damage had been done and Ewan didn’t speak to me much after that, unless he had to, and I think the training consultant, hired for the colleague trust exercise, could sense something was amiss. I got the feeling the session where we had to fall backwards, relying on our co-workers to catch us, was deliberately cut short, even before Barbara refused to participate, saying she couldn’t risk putting her back out. Yet not before Simone had virtually swooned backwards into Ewan’s puny grip. I don’t think this was quite the impact on the team dynamic Lucinda was hoping for when she booked the training day, but at least we all learned a bit more about each other.

So we all went back to our desks and got on with our work as best we could. If I saw Ewan heading to the coffee machine, I’d hold back until he cleared the area and if he saw me putting my work tray away, he’d suddenly log off, grab his jacket, yell “night all,” and sprint to the elevators. On Barbara’s birthday we didn’t even go for the usual birthday pizza lunch as we all had other commitments, though I think it was because none of us actually wanted to spend any more time than we had to with each other (except Ewan and Simone, of course).

Then whingeing Amy complained to Lucinda that the bad blood between myself and Ewan was causing tensions in the team. Perhaps if she hadn’t snitched to Ewan in the first place there wouldn’t have been any bad blood as he would never have known I thought him an idiot and I could have made my comments about his childish rewards system without any personal backlash.

Anyway, we both got the call up to her office last Friday morning.

“I’ve noticed you two are increasingly antagonistic towards each other,” Lucinda said, though gritted teeth. “You’re being uncooperative and uncollaborative and failing to demonstrate the corporate values. This is impacting on team morale and it must stop.”

Ewan stared straight ahead. I stared straight ahead. Neither of us denied it, but neither of us was prepared to budge.

“I have given this some thought and I am going to refer you both to a business coach I know who will work with you together, to settle your differences and learn how you can work more effectively and collaboratively.”

So this is how Ewan and I found ourselves on Tuesday morning at the offices of “Productivity With Purpose” going through some enneagram personality test that looked like an initiation ceremony into the Illuminati with crayons. Josh would have loved it.

Our revered business coach, Cosmo Beecham (“but most people call me Cos-Be”), with his multicoloured ad-man glasses and swept back hair which was fooling no-one, was droning on about how the Challenger (that’s me) and the Optimist (also known as the Idiot) can work more harmoniously together. Frankly Lucinda might as well have sent us to Mystic Mary the Tarot Card Reader when the circus came to town, it was so ridiculously phoney and over-simplified. Basically, Ewan is an idiot but doesn’t want to accept that so instead he repairs his ego by calling me overly negative. The difference is that I know Ewan is an idiot, because he constantly does idiotic things, whereas he only thinks I’m negative because he can’t accept accurate feedback.

After a tiresome day of riling up Cosmo by refusing to call him Cos-Be and being told to stop being childish for suggesting we should call Ewan “Ew-Kno”, I left “Productivity With Purpose” clutching my coloured Illuminati charts and a detailed breakdown of my personality deficiencies, according to Cos-Be, under different stress situations. Ewan and I walked back to the train station together and Ewan, who clearly had been sucked in (of course he had) by the phoney ad-man, raved on about what he had learned about his behaviours and how he thought the whole team should be subject to the same torture. I asked why he was surprised by his results given he was the one who filled in the questionnaire on himself. Surely it was just reflecting back his own self-view? Ewan laughed and said I was such a Challenger. I was thankful when he got off the train four stops before mine.

Next day I logged in and clicked on an email sent at 7.50 that morning.

“Hey Kaz

I just want to say that I really enjoyed yesterday’s session with Cos-Be and the insights he gave us, not only about ourselves but about each other. I feel I can really appreciate your point of view better and I apologise if I have caused any offence in the past by referring to your Challenger style as ‘negative’. I appreciate now the dynamics that you bring to the team by testing our ideas, and that you only want to reach the most successful outcome.

Have a great day!

Ewan.”

I thought about my response carefully. The one I wanted to write was clearly not appropriate, especially as he’d ccd in Lucinda. I started to write a long, insincere reply but it felt so inauthentic it gave me such a queasy feeling I was tempted to raid Barbara’s desk drawer for pain relief. I deleted that draft and tried again.

“Hi Ewan,

Noted.

Kind regards

Karen”

That seemed honest but too brusque. I consulted my Challenger charts. The directness was good but perhaps required more empathy. Then Josh came ambling over and started babbling about project plans, so I quickly typed:

“Thanks Ewan,

I agree, you too!

Karen”

This felt suitably ambiguous: supportive, agreeable yet non-committal on my part. I hit send.

Whilst Josh leaned across my desk showing me the intricacies of our work programme for the next three months, over his shoulder I could see Ewan, on the other side of the office, clicking, pausing, clicking again then slamming his mouse on his desk.

Josh turned to page two and I clicked on my Sent box.

“Thanks Ewan, I agree, you tool”.

I hadn’t typed an exclamation mark, I’d typed the letter ‘l’. I rolled my eyes and sniggered at my mistake.

Ewan pushed back his chair with such force it shot into Barbara who folded over like an out-of-date fortune cookie. He snatched up a piece of paper from the printer and marched straight into Lucinda’s office.

Less than thirty seconds later, my phone rang.

“Karen,” said Lucinda. “I have Ewan here. Could you come into my office right now, please?”

I stood, straightened my jacket, fixed my best corporate smile and wondered, as I ambled towards Lucinda’s office, how many compliance frameworks it takes to change a typo.