Are You Ashamed of Where You Work?

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Two months ago, my office received an e-mailed inquiry about hiring me to speak at an upper-level management meeting for the U.S. Treasury Department. I personally called to follow-up and in the conversation the potential client stated again that she worked for Treasury. It’s a huge organization so I asked, “Which agency in Treasury?” With hesitation and in a lowered voice she said, “it’s the IRS.” “Oh! I’ve done programs for the IRS before, which division?” There was a pause. It was obvious she was uncomfortable telling me and then she said, “Tax collections? Some people are uncomfortable with them — you know, because of their reputation.” Later she told me she had worked there for years and she kept saying “they”. She said things like “they are having problems with morale.” instead of choosing to say “we are having problems with morale.” And I thought, “You don’t sound too smart. You’re ashamed of where you work and you’re distancing yourself from it. You can’t be contributing much. Do the agency and yourself a favor and change or get out.”

Was I being harsh? All I did was instinctively react to the “silent message” she sent to me. When I hear someone knocking where they work, I hear them down-grading themselves. Saying “they” when talking about the organization implies the talker is not a team player, not a leader, not committed, not willing to shoulder responsibility for improvement, and not particularly valuable in the grand scheme of things. And to me, that doesn’t sound smart.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Are You Ashamed of Where You Work?

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