Cherry Picker

 

My manager and I have been getting along really well with each other for quite some time now but it was a rocky road. In one of our first 1:1s she accused me of cherry picking and not pulling my weight. As you can imagine, this did not go down well and I felt insulted as well as defensive. Since then, I have reflected back to this label quite frequently and yes, I am a proud "cherry-picker". Call it the stubbornness of middle age, the confidence of experience or just my personal quirk, but it is true that I tend to devote my time and attention to projects I love and am passionate about and duck and cover when some unwanted tasks looms on the horizon. Basically anything that involves spreadsheets and to-do-lists belong into the latter category, but also projects that involve working with colleagues who are not among my favourites to put it mildly.

Well, I recently pitched a workshop idea to my manager as I saw a need for it. She told me to pilot it and in the meantime, coincidentally, a company-wide initiative was launched where this just fits in nicely and in turn makes her look good for having somebody on her team who anticipated this trend. The pilot was more than successful and I have probably never received such enthusiastic feedback for anything in my career. I felt I could both empower and help participants. As a result, these workshops are becoming a series. I posted about it on LikedIn and it generated more likes (including one by our CEO who is not even my first contact) than any previous post of mine, which added to my sense of accomplishment regarding this pet project. 

Now that I have built up a good track record of "cherry orchards" if you so will, my manager has never again brought up this "deficit" of mine and lets me experiment, which I am really thankful for.