Levity Break.
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A man is floating in a hot air balloon, totally lost. He sees another man working out in a field, and decides to float down to ask this gent for some help.
"Excuse me mate - Could you tell me where I am?" He calls out.
"Sure - You're in a hot air balloon, about five metres off the ground!" the man on the ground replies.
Bemused and nonplussed, the man in the hot air balloon yells back "Well that's was completely useless. You must be an engineer, technically correct, but you've missed the point of my question".
The engineer on the ground replies "Ah, you must be a middle manager".
Now curious, the manager queries "I am, but how did you guess?"
"Well, you had a problem. Rather than ask me directly to solve your problem, you asked me a question without context, and I answered it correctly. Now, you still have a problem, but some how it's my fault!".
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You can be cynical, and read it as a dig. You can be naive, and assume I'm just trying to lighten the atmosphere here. But this whole experience is a reminder to me that knowledge is easy. I came into this knowing that it was going to devolve into a mud slinging match several days ago. I knew I shouldn't respond. I knew he had gotten my goat, and that I chose to respond out of emotion. I also knew that he was technically incorrect, and that he was making invalid appeals to authority (And he did it again, referring to himself as a manager of 126 employees). I also knew that he would keep saying "You're missing my point" while misunderstanding my rebuttal, and/or selectively quoting my posts...
And knowing all that, I wanted my goat back, so I said something. And now I am reminded that knowing is easy. Wisdom - applying what you know in the face of emotion, is very tough. And if you will excuse my indirect humblebrag and appeal to authority... I knew all this 2 years ago, when I stepped down from being an executive, to choose a job that had no managerial responsibilities.
When I first became an executive, my leadership coach said to me - "Emotional regulation is the most important skill of a manager. The more senior you are, the more people will look to the tiniest of clues to try to read your mind. There is a true story of a Chief Executive Officer, who played tennis right before a presentation from a specialist technician. Just as the technician cracked a joke, a pulled muscle from the tennis match made the CEO wince... The specialist technician saw, and as soon as he finished his presentation, he went to a quiet room to and started drafting his apology and resignation to his own manager..."
Emotional regulation is hard, but is the most important skill of a manager. But managers are most often promoted because they are the most experienced or the most competent person to do the job they are managing. As a result, the team loses a competent individual contributor, and gains an incompetent manager. It's called the Peter Principle - Started off as a joke, but now taken pretty seriously:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
So... Reminder to self, and perhaps a reminder to everyone else - If you think you shouldn't, don't.
