I used to take people at face value. I believed the words they said, and didn’t look further towards their actions. I assumed they were presenting an honest version of themselves. That's how I approach this world so I naively assumed everyone was like me.
I'm an observant person though, always have been. So I think over time the cognitive dissonance of that naively held belief and what I was actually observing, got harder to explain away. Then I took a job where I stepped into included investigative roles including participating in interviews of people that pushed against that naively held belief even more.
Then my ex-husband's masks fully fell as he casually discarded me. I found that cognitive dissonance was too uncomfortable to ignore or excuse away. So my perspective drastically shifted as I processed and healed to the point where those naive assumptions were exposed and chipped away at.
On Thursday, I went on a field trip with an FBI agent. We spent probably close to four hours together in a car. I will admit that I observed his driving far more than I ever would have before. Driving is a behavior that can be concretely observed which says more about someone's nature than anything they communicate with words. He showed some signs of impatience with other drivers (as we probably all do from time to time) but never anywhere near the extent where he got aggressive. At no point did I feel unsafe like I so often did with my ex-husband.
What struck me most about our interactions was how comfortable the silences felt. When we talked conversation flowed fairly easily but neither one of us felt the need to fill the silences when we didn't have anything to say. It was refreshing as I did have a little bit of anxiety about going on a drive with a man I had only met in passing once.
Yesterday, my division had a retreat followed by a happy hour. I've been with this office seven weeks now but still don't know so many of my colleagues' names because our floor is a bit spread out and I rarely make it down the other hall. So I was really looking forward to better getting to know people and getting a better vibe on the division. There was one thing that really surprised me - a huge divide between support staff and attorneys.
To clarify, I wasn't surprised that a divide existed. There was a divide in my Birmingham office that initially did surprise me because it didn't really exist, at least that I experienced, in my Milwaukee office. I remember talking about it with a fellow "northerner" colleague who had lived a lot of places. In her experience, it seemed unique to the south.
What surprised me about the feel of this divide in my new office is that it seemed to strongly stem from the support staff themselves. On repeated occasions throughout the day, we were encouraged to join the attorneys and each time the rest of the support staff chose not to.
It left me feeling like I had to find a way to straddle both worlds. I wanted to get to know the attorneys better because they are the ones I will actually be directly working with and some of the content of their sessions was more relevant to me. But I didn't want to alienate myself from the support staff group I was technically part of. Considering I ultimately only ended up spending one session with the support staff, I probably didn't succeed at that.
I felt like I fit in with the attorneys better. The same was generally true in my last office.
What I have enjoyed most about this division so far which was strongly reflected in how the retreat played out was a strong emphasis on the mentorship and collaboration roles of management and a de-emphasis on control. That's not to say my manager doesn't make the hard decisions and step up as a leader. But she does so in a way that seems to center her staff instead of herself. It's interesting when a manager actually takes action and behaves in a way that centers her staff, they don't need to use a lot of words to try communicate how they want to perceived. The results seem to be a lot more respect and rapport than I saw in my last office. My colleagues also seem to have simultaneously a lot more autonomy and a lot more support.
On another note, there is a youthful energy in this office, especially among the attorneys. As I sat in a conference room with them all (and then later at a happy hour with a subset of them), especially as some discussions came up that started to give clues to some of their ages, I realized many of them are younger than me and those that are not aren't far off from my age. With that youthful energy comes some noticeable differences - more idealism, more willingness to try cases, an openness to technology including AI, maybe even a bit more authenticity and openness about who they are.
As I sat through a presentation on AI where the use of AI was actually encouraged, I was a bit taken aback. It was only a few months ago, that I sat in a conference room in Birmingham where the conversation among my old division strongly discouraged the use of AI and prohibited its use in most scenarios.
Anyway, the evening ended with a couple off-hand comments that were really nice to hear. I guess I made such an impression on my new management that from my application and interview on that first posting last August, they had decided one of the investigator spots was mine. And in just the seven weeks here, at least one attorney I work with has verbally recognized how good I am and what an asset I am. People are already seeing me as an active member of their team.
I came into an office that has high expectations of me and I am capable of generally meeting those high expectations. What has always matter most to me in my career is that the work I do is meaningful and that the opportunities for growth and to excel are great. This office might actually meet both of those.
And to tie everything back to my first few paragraphs, I'm not sure how much of all of this I would have paid attention to in the past. My observations would have been more superficial and filtered through how I view the world. I also wouldn't have participated like this at all which turned it into a two way street. It's been a bit entertaining to watch people try to figure me out as they learn more and more about me.
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