Not consciously, but as a result of mindfulness I think I am getting nicer. When you're less preoccupied with your own thoughts its easier to pay attention to the needs of others, and I find myself asking whether people are OK or whether there is anything they need more often, I think, than I used to. But I'm not doing it out of any conscious intention. It's just easier respond to people when you pay more attention to them.

So far, it hasn't. I asked my Dad to look into the chapter and consider doing the exercise, but it's not hihg on his priority list and I don't want to make a scene about it. So for now I'm posting this blog without doing the exercise and I'll keep an eye out for opportunities to do empathic listening, either formally or informally,in the leadup to or during bootcamp.

When I did the loving kindness exercise, I thought of a friend of mine, someone I'm pretty sure I've offended and is giving me the cold shoulder, but I don't know what more I can do to mend bridges with them. Reminding myself that they have reasons for feeling the way they feel, and that they're behaving this way because they believe it will preserve their own happiness makes the situation a little easier to tolerate.

I'll be honest, I struggle with this one. It's difficult for me to think of occasions where I've had a serious disagreement with somone about something that matters, because most disagreements are pretty trivial in the grand scheme. Where I have done, I really struggle to see the other person's viewpoint as reasonable. I realise that's what a stubborn, unreasonable person would say, but sometimes it's true. I started doing debating when I was 13 years old, and I was a litigation lawyer for 5 years. I have a lot of practise at viewing arguments from other people's perspectives, and when their arguments are reasonable it's usually possible to come to a compromise, and then it doesn't feel like a disagreement anymore. Plus, the best example is one that jeopardised my job and my career, so it's pretty raw. But let's give it a go.

My perspective:

When I was a lawyer, my boss asked me to undertake a task on a case called a 'discovery'. This mostly involves reading and listing a lot of documents. It's time-consuming and tedious work, which is why it is usually assigned to junior lawyers. Previous discoveries hadn't gone as smoothly as they should, so when my boss asked me to work on this one, I said it would be helpful if it was clearer what each of our responsibilities were. My boss told me my role was to write the list of documents. Responsibility for obtaining the documents from the clients wasn't mentioned, but I told my boss I thought it would work best if they maintained overall responsibility for the file and I did the tasks I was assigned, which at that point meant writing the list.

Later on, my boss asked me to write a draft letter to some of our clients requesting more documents, which I did. I don't believe I saw the final version which went out. I kept working on the list, which didn't take particularly long since we didn't have a lot of documents to start with.

As more documents came in, I told my boss that I didn't think we had enough time to meet our deadline. I told them this on several occasions, as did one of our clients. These concerns didn't get a response, or I was simply told to work faster. I tried to explain that I was working as fast as I could, that there were simply too many documents, but my boss wouldn't listen, and as a subordinate, I could only push it so far.

One week before the deadline, my boss went on leave. They stated they had 'complete confidence' in my ability to get it finished, despite my telling them I didn't think that was possible. During that final week, I called my boss and told them it couldn't be finished. They said if I didn't have the resources, I should get other staff involved. My boss believed they had told me this before, but it had never been raised up until now.

I tried to enlist help from other staff, but they were all busy with their own affairs, and didn't necessarily have the expertise to assist. It was too little, too late. At no point did my boss make any effort to ascertain how many documents there were, or how long the task would take. I later found out that my boss estimated the discovery would take four weeks, but waited until there was less time than that to get started.

When we missed the deadline, my boss blamed me. They said I didn't work hard enough, and that I was rude and abusive to her and other staff. This just isn't true. My boss ignored all the warnings I gave, and blamed me for their own mismanagement of the file.

My Boss's Perspective:

I asked Cliff to do the discovery. He had done discoveries before, and this should have been possible for him. I told him to get help if he needed it, but he shouldn't have needed it.

End of the exercise

Those two sentences are all I can write while trying to make my boss' perspective reasonable. I'm happy to accept that they acted from incomplete information about the scale of the task, but assesing the task before delegating it was part of their responsibility as a boss, so I can't think that makes them any more reasonable.

I'm prepared to believe they think they gave me enough resources to handle it, but all the 'help' that was offered was offered far too late to actually assist, and the other things that my boss claimed about me (this is a pretty truncated version of events) are simply untrue.

I've tried to understand their perspective, both then and now, and there's no way I can see it as reasonable. It's a shame, because my boss was a person I admired and respected up until that point.