I am in a team of seven at work. I call it a "team" because I believe in working together, even though I am supposed to be the second-in-command which I only found out today. So I am in deeper water than I thought. My team does all the negotiations and liaising of the contracts, then I take over and do all the legal comments, proof-reading, drafting, editing before passing over to my immediate superior (who reports directly to the Big Boss) for her final approval before everything goes to the Boss.
Anyway today I gave my first legal advise on why certain documents are more valid and acceptable over others. Wow.... I really feel like a lawyer.... without the qualifications. My team had to draft a letter of assignment and a speech for the Boss for tomorrow's Christmas lunch buffet, and I had to do the editing. I call it "editing" because that was what I was supposed to do, but in the end I ended up re-writing the whole thing all over again.
I re-did the entire speech and re-drafted the letter to incorporate all the legal terms and conditions. Now I wonder if I should have done that. Between being labelled as a bitch who picked on things (but if the grammar is not up to par, it would be horrifying to submit the entire thing) and just amending it by myself, I chose the latter.
I am not sure if that is a good choice since this is the first time I have ever been in a situation like this, but if I am to give my comments to whoever who drafted the documents, how would the person feel? A pipsqueak throwing the weight around on just the second day of work?
On the other hand, if I do not give my comments and continue receiving work like this, I would have to constantly end up re-doing everything by myself. And if my colleague finds out I have amended everything she handed to me, would that not be worse? She will think I am deliberately back-stabbing her or something.
Anyway my superior was very pleased with the letter. She said it was refreshing to see a real legal letter, rather than the normal layman correspondence they have been sending out. Because of this, I was thrown two more documents to comment on. That itself was alright, except the documents came from China and I have to explain to the Big Boss what the documents were about.
I always find it a big chore reading Chinese characters, especially Chinese legal jargon. I asked my fellow team members if any of them could work with me, but once they saw the Chinese documents, all of them expressed their discomfort. I always find it an irony that each time when there are Chinese documents to translate, I always end up doing them, whichever company I am in.
There are so many others who can speak much better and more fluent Mandarin than me, yet they claim they could not recognise the characters. My spoken Mandarin is so poor that I sound like a foreigner trying to speak the language. So why am I always the one that was arrowed?
It is not fair! I am the one who had to retake my Chinese examinations as I did so badly the first time round! I should be the one asking people to translate Chinese documents for me and not the other way round!
So in between the time spent asking if people were willing to lend me a hand, I might as well use the time to do everything by myself. It is so hard to do the right thing at times. If you do not delegate, people will think you want to take all the credit by yourself and accuse you of not being a team worker. On the other hand when you delegate and others are uncooperative, you still have to end up doing everything by yourself and still get accused of not being a team worker.
What situation have I gotten myself into? No wonder people I know rather be at the bottom or the top rather than the middle. You get stress from all areas once you are in the middle. I do not wish to be labelled as a "bad boss" or whatever, not that I even consider myself as any sort of boss in the first place, but it is also not conducive if I end up doing more work because of my colleague's mistake as ultimately it is more advantageous in the long run if she can try to learn from her mistakes.
Shall I then be the bad person and ask my colleague to re-do the work, or shall I just keep peace and quiet and take on everything by myself? I hate being stuck in situations like these where I incur wraths no matter which decision I make.
Anyway today I gave my first legal advise on why certain documents are more valid and acceptable over others. Wow.... I really feel like a lawyer.... without the qualifications. My team had to draft a letter of assignment and a speech for the Boss for tomorrow's Christmas lunch buffet, and I had to do the editing. I call it "editing" because that was what I was supposed to do, but in the end I ended up re-writing the whole thing all over again.
I re-did the entire speech and re-drafted the letter to incorporate all the legal terms and conditions. Now I wonder if I should have done that. Between being labelled as a bitch who picked on things (but if the grammar is not up to par, it would be horrifying to submit the entire thing) and just amending it by myself, I chose the latter.
I am not sure if that is a good choice since this is the first time I have ever been in a situation like this, but if I am to give my comments to whoever who drafted the documents, how would the person feel? A pipsqueak throwing the weight around on just the second day of work?
On the other hand, if I do not give my comments and continue receiving work like this, I would have to constantly end up re-doing everything by myself. And if my colleague finds out I have amended everything she handed to me, would that not be worse? She will think I am deliberately back-stabbing her or something.
Anyway my superior was very pleased with the letter. She said it was refreshing to see a real legal letter, rather than the normal layman correspondence they have been sending out. Because of this, I was thrown two more documents to comment on. That itself was alright, except the documents came from China and I have to explain to the Big Boss what the documents were about.
I always find it a big chore reading Chinese characters, especially Chinese legal jargon. I asked my fellow team members if any of them could work with me, but once they saw the Chinese documents, all of them expressed their discomfort. I always find it an irony that each time when there are Chinese documents to translate, I always end up doing them, whichever company I am in.
There are so many others who can speak much better and more fluent Mandarin than me, yet they claim they could not recognise the characters. My spoken Mandarin is so poor that I sound like a foreigner trying to speak the language. So why am I always the one that was arrowed?
It is not fair! I am the one who had to retake my Chinese examinations as I did so badly the first time round! I should be the one asking people to translate Chinese documents for me and not the other way round!
So in between the time spent asking if people were willing to lend me a hand, I might as well use the time to do everything by myself. It is so hard to do the right thing at times. If you do not delegate, people will think you want to take all the credit by yourself and accuse you of not being a team worker. On the other hand when you delegate and others are uncooperative, you still have to end up doing everything by yourself and still get accused of not being a team worker.
What situation have I gotten myself into? No wonder people I know rather be at the bottom or the top rather than the middle. You get stress from all areas once you are in the middle. I do not wish to be labelled as a "bad boss" or whatever, not that I even consider myself as any sort of boss in the first place, but it is also not conducive if I end up doing more work because of my colleague's mistake as ultimately it is more advantageous in the long run if she can try to learn from her mistakes.
Shall I then be the bad person and ask my colleague to re-do the work, or shall I just keep peace and quiet and take on everything by myself? I hate being stuck in situations like these where I incur wraths no matter which decision I make.
7 comments:
Hey, at least you have the option to delegate.
I can only take, even if I feel that it is an unreasonable allotment of project. (And guess who's going to get praised for delivring the projects on time? Hint: that person's not going to be me.)
Shall I then be the bad person and ask my colleague to re-do the work, or shall I just keep peace and quiet and take on everything by myself?
Huh? If you ask your colleague to re-do the work, it makes you a bad person??? I fail to see the logic.
What's so wrong of asking your colleague to re-do the work that needs to be re-done?
If you insist on doing everything by yourself, you're not giving a chance for your colleague to learn from his/her mistake. And that will actually make you a bad person.
You do have to feedback to your colleague about what can be done to improve the work. That way it would be a positive criticism.
Not the: "This is bad, redo!" (without telling what is so bad about it, and how to improve on it, like what I get all the time)
And do keep all the "original" and "made over" documents somewhere safe. One day you might need them.
Ole Wolvie : I understand, I've been in your situation too. And thanks for your suggestion, I'll try that.
Anon_X : I say I'm the "bad" person cos most people do not like to be told they are wrong, and my colleagues have been in the company longer than me, so they may think I'm some sort of little upstart trying to make them look bad.
I do not want to do all the work by myself too (cos I don't have the time for that), but people may not like it if I just tell them their mistakes especially since I only just joined the company. Anyway I'm using Wolvie's suggestion and see if that works.
Ole'wolvie: But don't you think you are responsible too in asking your boss to clarify about "This is bad, redo!" ? :)
SH: You concern yourself too much about how people might think (about your action), when it's yourself that you should have to think about first. (Darn, this admittedly sounds selfish. But go ahead & play a martyr if that's how you like it). :\
The response was: "Find out yourself. This is part of your on the job 'training'."
Training indeed.
Everytime I tried to ask for more time for a project, the response wuold be: "You're expected to finish it on time, and not only work an 8-hour day."
(Nevermind all the added extras, post-project updating and debrief that was not taken into consideration when allocating project time, and that I have been working 10+ hour days for the past 2 weeks.)
Lovely supervisor isn't it?
Anon_X : Well... people have to be selfish at times, isn't it?
Ole Wolvie : I know exactly what you mean. I used to get that all the time too.
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