Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Good things come to those who wait.

Despite my morose post yesterday it was a pretty dynamic day.

We had a meeting with the engineers of the mural relocation project  that I am overseeing (a link below if you haven't seen it)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/facebook/7274348.html

The meeting was held in their fancy down town skyscraper office all architecturally snazzy and cutting edge.
we hadn't picked the engineers and had not been very satisfied with them up to this point, but now in the fancy office I felt a little intimidated especially in the high tech conference room with dry erase graph paper walls that you can draw our designs directly on the wall.

To date all our meetings have been on site in a half demo-ed building sitting on rusty patio furniture in the neglected court yard, with cranes swinging to and fro in the periphery, so this definitely changed my estimation of who we were dealing with.

but despite the blinged out office, the fact of the matter was that they were not providing us with what we wanted and were giving us  attitude to boot.

I will try to spare you the details But my father who is kind of a wizard and comes up with engineering principles based on his gut, (which is quite large) the engineer who is a mild mannered and non confrontational sort was getting increasingly dismissive of my fathers requests, in all fairness my dad  was interrupting his explanations and kept  demanding the same calculations but based of a feeling so it didn't have the apparent perimeters engineers want.

After an hour I was feed up, I stopped all the banter and asked what the next part of the agenda was for the meeting . the next item ended up proving my fathers concerns to be of paramount importance as it involved an engineering problem that the engineer neglected to consider. He ducked and dodged the fact that he screwed up and was essentially a jerk for not taking us seriously, himself sitting high on the reputation of the company

Three and a half hours into a one hour meeting we finally start to wrap it up. As we are getting ready to go I felt un easy with how the meeting had gone  and choose my words carefully to call the guy out on his behavior.

I had expressed in the interest of or team I feel that it is very important that we look at what happened in the meeting because it didn't work and that in the future I would like to see that the engineer would rather than belittle our concerns as unreasonable that he instead, in our future dealings, uses his meticulous eye to see where our concerns my have a relevant application, as had turned out in this case.

He deflected and justified, at this point I felt the early warning flags of rage setting in, the one triggered by perceived injustice, I had just spent the weekend experiencing this with my father and was really feeling drained from that way of being , my mind quickly calculated my attack how to make him bend in submission to my point of view which was arguably accurate( I shy from say that it was TRUE or  THE TRUTH) any way, I looked at this grown many a partner in this fancy company totally engulfed in self preservation, rattled by my keen perception .....and I chose to let it go, he didn't get what I was trying to say ...I am not going to force him. the meeting ended the air still thick gradually thinned as we shook hands and he walked us to the door with an apologetic quiver..the receptionist had go home now we will have to pay 20 bucks for parking which would have been free otherwise.

As it turns out this morning the engineer called my father, holding back tears apologized for his behavior in the meeting and affirmed his commitment to be a team player and that he will have the calculations we were originally asking for.

my father had recounted this encounter to me and I felt very satisfied, my words had effect it just took some time. This served as a confirmation to me of a way of being that works, I know I was coming from a good place, but it appeared that that was not perceived by others , rather than be attached to being understood, I accepted the outcome on his own time and the safely of his own space it seems that the intent ended up ringing true for him and he was empowered in making the correction himself.

patience paid off and allowed for a beautiful voluntary exchange of the heart, something that wouldn't have happend if I insisted on being right.

There are a few relationship in which I could apply this lesson, and i shall begin immediately.

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