It's My Party

Earlier this week, my supervisor, my team and our sister team, all colluded behind my back to throw me a good bye party of sorts. Not so much a party but an eating session. Not so much for me, because it was a surprise and I did not know about it so I had eaten prior to meeting with them. It was not so much an eating session as it was our scheduled time to meet together for our bi-monthly combined team meeting. So, people were forced to be there, each agreed to bring something to eat, and my goodbye was a point on the team meeting agenda. So there I was, for my going away "party" full from breakfast and I got a quick goodbye from everyone.

WOW!! Well if that setup does not inspire me to feel pride about the job I am leaving, I do not know what will. What kind of screwed up leader says goodbye that way? I mean really, who was the party for? Did anyone ask me if I wanted my goodbye party to be a part of our team meeting? Did anybody at least attempt to fool me into not eating breakfast so that I would be able to enjoy a delicious, free, combination of various snacks? Did anybody ask what kind of food I like? Did anybody consider if I wanted people to be forced to say goodbye to me?

Now, I know I am not a "GREAT" leader. I think I do okay. If my goodbye party was only attended by myself and one or two others, I would appreciate that more than setting it up for a time when people have to be there. Every time that someone from my team left, I would talk to that person ahead of time, find out what kind of food they like, let them pick a restaurant, work out with them and the team what afternoon/evening would work best, organize the reservations with the restaurant, and be one of the ones to chip in to buy their dinner. I did that for the 2 people on my team that left on good terms.

What do I get in return? A meal that I did not choose and could not eat provided by people who had no choice to attend and required virtually no effort to organize. What's really funny is the fact that toward the last couple of months of my time with this organization, my supervisor wanted to press upon me how to be a better leader. She required, yes REQUIRED me to read a book about motivating people. Well one of the points in that book is that you should lead from the front. Now juxtapose how I treated people who left my team to how my "motivating" supervisor treated my departure.

When I got to the meeting and saw the different selection of food, my first thought was "Well I should be grateful that they cared enough about me to throw me a party." Well, okay, my first real thought was, "Well, there goes my dinner at a restaurant paid for by my workers." But seriously, am I being ungrateful or do I have a legitimate complaint that my party really wasn't my party and that it was a horrible example of leadership? The downside was that since it was headed up by my supervisor, who is going to say no? Who would say to their boss's boss, well I think we should do something that will require a little more effort?

I really am curious though how my team would have voted if they were given the choice between that "party" of snacks or allowing me to pick a restaurant and everyone who wanted to attend getting a meal of their choice.

Should a goodbye party be about, for, and take into consideration the wants of the person you are saying goodbye to or should it be about what you, the giver, wants? When a loved one has a birthday, do you get them what you want? I could see that go over real well with Sweetie if I were to buy her a new set of golf clubs on her birthday.

I don't know, just my thoughts. Where is my Pulitzer?