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The Middle.
During my United Fresh Produce Industry Leadership Program (#class24 đź’•), we had an incredibly smart, talented, and beautiful lady guiding us. Her name was Julie, and she was fabulous. (Still is!) She had a very polite and kind way of telling you some honest truths. She was blunt and funny. She said a lot of memorable things during our time, but the one that keeps coming to my mind in the midst of this coronavirus pandemic is this: “Get the hell out of middle management as fast as you can.” (Her words exactly.) Middle managers experience compression by those they lead and those who lead them. It’s a tough place…
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Emotional.
Remember when I wrote about listening to the wrong podcast episode of The Happiness Lab that prompted the post Sharing is Caring? Well, I finally listened to the episode that was originally recommended for me to listen to. It was called “Don’t Think of the White Bear.” I don’t even remember why this specific episode was recommended to me by a colleague. I think we were talking about how emotions are contagious. But what I took away from the episode was actually justification to my feelings in the post Let Me Be. Turns out, the best way to get over our emotions is to fully embrace them, while we’re feeling…
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Expectations.
I had several conversations this week that essentially revolved around expectations. Each conversation was unique with different circumstances, different personalities, different goals, and different intentions. So when I said intentions don’t matter, I was kind of lying. But really, it all depends. In one conversation, we were talking about how a specific person has a reputation of over-promising and under-delivering.  The consistent under-delivery has now become my expectation. Whether he cannot produce due to intentional or accidental circumstances, it doesn’t matter. The habit formed has shaped my opinion of him, and I now find him unreliable and untrustworthy. This will ultimately lead to a dissolution of the relationship, unless he…