I remember hearing a story once about how circus elephants are (or were) trained.
A young man is walking around the circus when he sees a large elephant tied to a pole using a thin rope. The man walks up to the trainer and asks, "How can you keep that elephant tied to this stick using just this thing rope? Can't it pull itself free?"
The trainer said, "Well, I'm sure it could if it tried. But it won't. When he was a baby we kept him chained to a large stake. He would struggled for awhile, but the chain was thick enough and the stake strong enough that he couldn't get loose. After awhile, he just stops trying. Now the sensation of resistance around his leg is enough to make him think he can't move beyond the reach of the rope."
This story illustrates the idea of learned helplessness. Basically you become trained to the notion that something is pointless, so why bother trying to change it?
I bring this up because sometimes these learned responses can be insidiously difficult to change. Even when we become conscious of the effects.
My previous job had aspects that I eventually realized were toxic. Maybe these elements are ingrained in the field, maybe there is some kind of institutional momentum perpetuating the elements, maybe it's the culture of the organization or maybe it's any of a dozen other reasons all mixed together, but in the end it doesn't matter except to realize that these elements formed a toxic environment, not just in which to work but an environment where the toxic nature became part of who we are as employees. It was this realization that partially led me to take the risk of moving to the city, by myself, leaving my family behind so that I could try working for a company that held the promise of being different.
I've been working with the new employer for approximately five months. I've had one review session with fairly positive things to say. I recently got a message from our manager in the office saying that he was scheduling a "1 on 1" session with each person on the team, just to review things like what we enjoy with the company and what things could be changed and see that we're all on the same page. I could see in the schedule that my block was only half an hour.
On the surface, this doesn't look like anything to really worry about.
But I realized that when I first read this message, I became anxious. The first thoughts going through my head were worries that this was a meeting where I was going to get a warning of some sort, or possibly told that I was going to be fired.
Was I going to be criticized for some perceived deficiency? Had I offended someone? What would I do, with a lease on the apartment and bills to pay, if he were going to ask me for my keys and badge?
Granted, all these worries were fleeting thoughts. I have no real reason to think that the message hid anything more sinister than what was printed at face value in the text. He had talked to one team member already, and the rest of us on the sysadmin team were scheduled for a session as well. If there were problems I really have no reason to think I wouldn't be told about perceived shortcomings and given a chance to remedy them.
But I still had those thoughts.
Thinking back, the previous job, which I had for over a decade, didn't really have a system of feedback or evaluation. When the boss wants to talk to you, it wasn't a congratulations. It was for a dressing down. Sometimes you knew why before going in, if something big had just happened. More often than not, though, you would be simply given a brief, "Can I see you in my office?" type message with no indication of what the reason was, giving no opportunity to brace yourself or defend yourself.
Consequently, you came to loathe those times when a higher-up wanted to see you.
I became trained to use the CYA principle: "Cover Your Ass." Document things. Don't use the phone, because then you'd never have a way to prove that you or the other person said what you thought was said. Avoid anything that could mean you would fail, or even be associated with the failure, because when things go wrong you may be in line to have blame assigned to you. Victories and credit went to whoever could claim the ring first. Blame was claimed by whoever didn't get out of the way in time.
There were times where it felt like the previous job...in the public education sector...is in part a culture of blame, not one of responsibility. It was a culture that trained you to think that you aren't good enough to do more, and ingrained a fear of failing because there was a stigma attached.
I realize that this is one of my biggest faults in my new job environment. I feel perpetually stupid; missing things that I should have caught, or not knowing something that I feel I should know by now. I have a question and my first thought is to ask someone for the answer (and subsequently interrupting what they're working on) when my first impulse should be to work harder at ferreting an answer for myself, but I fear the responsibility of screwing up. Because then I would get the blame, and with it the stigma of failure, and failure is the kind of thing that isn't tolerated.
The thing is that failure is tolerated here. We had a recent series of unfortunate events wherein one of the seasoned admins made a mistake related to FSMO roles on Active Directory servers; it was a mistake that had...well, has...potential to create a number of problems. When going through a list of some servers that were offline, I commented on the one being down and another admin said, "That server can't be brought up. Ever. If we did, it would cause all sorts of problems with Active Directory."
Thinking back over events, I remembered the sheepish embarrassment from the admin that committed the error. But it was rarely ever brought up. The mistake was made, he acknowledged it, and the important thing to the team was to move ahead and keep things working through the crisis. I think he beat himself up more than anyone on the team did.
This is a different place. Part of me wants to believe that. Playing by these different rules...where failure could be an option...it feels like a trick. At the last minute the promise will be jerked away and what looked like cake is really nothing but paper towels covered in frosting (and am I the only one old enough to remember this reference?)
This is a different place.
Things are different now.
Keep telling myself that and maybe I'll eventually believe it.
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