Gratitude Journal #2

Apparently, you can train your brain to be happier by keeping a gratitude journal, so I am giving it a go. My goal is post about 100 things I am grateful for over the course of the year. (This should average out to just a little over 2/week, as I am getting started in week 4.) However, I am going to try and stay away from the standard family/friends/pets. Please know I absolutely am grateful for my family, friends, and pets. I would not have made it through the past couple of years without each of them. But if I am trying to train myself to be happier, then I want to start recognizing the smaller things in life that I am grateful for.

Gratitude Entry #2: Good Relationships with HR

When I started in my current role, the HR Director for our college was not someone I had a good relationship with. In fact, our relationship was mostly contentious. She did not like to use email for many reasons, and so often left voice mail messages if you did not answer your phone. At the time, if I had a voice mail at work, there was an 80% chance it was from her.

And let me tell you, I felt dread. Seriously. Anytime I would walk into my office and see my voice mail light on, I would feel a sense of dread. I wanted to ignore it. I would feel the same dread when my phone rang, and the caller ID told me it was her. I wanted to pretend my phone did not exist. And even after that person left the role, for close to a year, I still felt dread every time I saw my voice mail light on.

And the funny thing about that was that I had just started in my role. I did not have a lot of confidence in navigating the state systems. I both needed help from HR and was not in a spot to do a lot of pushing back. And yet, it felt like it was not possible to have a good interaction with this person. And that made doing the HR work I needed to do for faculty, staff, and some students very hard. And I was doing everything in my power to be as nice and accommodating as possible.

Luckily, that person is no longer with the college, and has not been for a few years.

I have now been in my role for a few years. I understand more of the issues involved. I am confident in my place, and my Chair’s esteem. I no longer worry about being accommodating. Instead, I am as fierce an advocate for my faculty, staff, and students as it is possible to be.

Last week, I know I was not easy for our College HR team to work with. I was pushing at a difficult issue. I was asking them to show me a policy which we all know does not exist, but which other parts of HR is pretending does. I have called multiple people in the chain on it, asking them to give me options or own up to the fact that we appear to have a de facto policy, and then make that policy visible to the people who need to see it. And the fault here is not with my College HR team. It is with Central HR. But I do not get to deal directly with Central. So the College team has to deal with me

I started this week with a meeting with the College HR team. And there was no dread. None. I knew going in that their goal was to work with me to find the best solution for the situation directly in front of us, and to have a better set of tools for preventing this situation in the future.

I spent a week pushing buttons. I spent a week being a serious pain in the ass. And I was able to go into that 8a meeting knowing that we would actually work through this as a team. Because they would understand my side (even if not completely agree with it), because they would own any mistakes that they had made (which they had not, in this case), because they understand what it means to be an advocate for our teams, and advocating for our faculty, staff, and students within policy is their goal, too.

And seriously, it makes a huge difference. It makes my working life, which is about 40% HR duties, so much better knowing I have a good relationship with college HR.

So thank you to my college HR team. I am grateful for you.