This post will also not be very popular but I'm OK with that. As an entrepreneur we embody a lot of different positions in terms of the work that we do. It is not for the faint of heart and it is certainly not meant for a certain group of people yet let me just say at times it is very very hard. I also think working in the corporate workplace and managing teams is also very very hard. As we talk about mental health and all of the challenges associated with employees today and those are very really issues, I think we also have to talk about our honest relationship with emotional baggage.
Emotional baggage is when somebody brings their issues from home into the workplace and thrust them upon your shoulders whether with intention or not essentially stating you need to deal with this. It's funny because I've experienced this myself and I can also tell you when I talk to other people they have as well. When people bring in their personal issues into the workplace often looking for people to commiserate with, they are polluting the workplace. With that being said yes, we should be empathetic and find out what people are going through to see if we can help them. If they are not willing to help themselves let me make a bold statement: take the baggage and leave it curbside and move on.
I share this story with great diplomacy and I can give you a story from almost every single company we've worked with similar to this. I had an employee years ago who complained about their job vigorously within the first 30 days. The following comment was made to me with a raised voice” you never have time for me”. What was funny about this comment was I had actually spent the first two weeks of this employee’s tenure every morning from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM training them. Yet, within 30 days in their minds, I had never given them a minute of my time. The person literally started to stomp their feet outside my office and I began to laugh thinking this is almost humorous. After a one-hour conversation of calming the person down and appeasing them and making sure they were OK I thought to myself ”What the hell am I doing”?
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