On Saturday I went to see my niece Emily play football. Back in July she was accepted into Norwich City Girls (Centre of Excellence – Under 10s), although this was the first time we have been able to go to one of the matches, as Mum usually works on Saturdays. Emily has been interested in football for a long time, and in the past she used to play for her school team, Hillside Rovers, and the Player Development Centre.
Saturday’s match took part in the grounds of a local high school, and Emily’s team was playing against the Arsenal Girls team. Unfortunately, her team lost 8-0. However, I did suspect that they would probably lose, as Arsenal are one of the famous London teams and apparently their girls team is the best in Europe.
Although I’m not that interested in football, I liked seeing Emily playing, even though it was a very cold morning and we all had to wrap up warm. There was also a cake stall and a van selling hot dogs and hot drinks. (I had a hot chocolate to keep me warm). I’ve told my sister Suzanne that I’d like to watch another of Emily’s matches in future – hopefully one which she will win!
On Sunday, after Mum had come home from work, we decided to go to the Townhouse for a carvery. Terry couldn’t stay with us for the meal as he was busy working on the porch, although he did drive us there and picked us up again once we’d finished our food.
In previous posts I’ve been saying that I may be promoted to Consultant level at work soon. Well, that’s not going to happen now. Not for at least another 6 months, anyway. I spent some time over the last couple of weeks writing up examples of how I think I’ve met the consultant-level competencies and I also gathered written feedback from people with whom I’ve worked in my department. I had the meeting with my manager yesterday afternoon. It was originally going to be held last week with a different manager, but they then decided it would be better to wait until my own manager is back this week, as he knows me better.
At the meeting, we discussed all the competencies, and although my manager said he thought I’d made very rapid progress over the last 6 months, he doesn’t think I’m ready to become a Consultant yet. Together we rated myself on a scale for each of the 7 competencies. It was the “Effective Communication” and “Managing Relationships” competencies which let me down, although I’m still a lot better at these than I was 6 months ago. My best competencies were: “Making Things Happen”, “Recommending & Implementing Change” (that is the main purpose of my job) and “Customer Focus” (I deal with internal customers only). The other 2 competencies were “Team Work” and “Decisiveness” and they both sit somewhere between the 2 extremes, ie not as bad as my 2 worst competencies, but not quite as good as my 3 best ones. You don’t have to get excellent ratings for every single competency in order to get promoted, just as long as they are all above a certain level.
I’m not overly disappointed about not getting promoted this time round; in fact I had a feeling I wouldn’t be quite ready yet. I knew it would be very difficult. My manager said he doesn’t think it would be in my best interests to promote me now as I may find some of the expectations, particularly with regards to communication skills, too difficult to reach. You don’t get a period of grace once you are promoted (as I had incorrectly assumed); you are expected to be fully competent from day one. Some of the aspects of being a consultant that my manager talked about yesterday actually sound quite scary – as Consultant is just one level down from being a team manager, you may sometimes get sent to meetings on your manager’s behalf, if he can’t make it for some reason. Some of these meetings could be with people whom you’ve never met before, and some of these people could be quite senior – for example, heads of departments. At this moment in time, I would feel intimidated
being put in a situation like that. In that way, I’m relieved I didn’t get promoted. Also, my manager said that it is better to be a really good Lead Adviser (that’s my current level) than a mediocre Consultant.
Therefore, even though I’m a little bit disappointed (I didn’t realise the expectations were quite so high), I can understand why my manager was unwilling to put me forward for promotion, until I have had more time to build up my communication and relationship-management skills. He has said he is willing to help me in any way possible.
It was originally one of my goals to gain promotion to Consultant either by this Christmas or by the time I’m 25. That won’t happen now – these review processes only happen once every 6 months, and the Christmas holidays are only just over 2 months away, and my 25th birthday is only just over 4 months ahead. I only set these goals for myself as a guide, to give me something to aim towards; it doesn’t matter too much if I don’t reach them. I’m not sure of the exact figures, but a lot of people don’t get promoted to Consultant level until their 30s or even beyond, although I do know of a handful of people who made it when they were younger than me. In a previous department, there was a 21 year-old girl who was already a consultant, so she might have been promoted even when she was only in her late teens or when she was 20 – I still wonder how on earth she managed to get the skills to reach that level at such an early age!
However, I’m not so bothered about comparing myself to other people nowadays as I was in the past. I’m not so self-conscious now – comparing yourself to others is pretty pointless as everyone develops skills at different ages and everyone has a unique skillset. No-one can be the best at everything, and no-one can be the worst at everything. Even if someone is better than you at something (for example getting promoted at a younger age than you), then it’s still almost certain that there are other things which they can’t do as well as you. So I’m not in such a big rush to get promoted to Consultant-level as I was to get from Adviser to Lead Adviser level a couple of years ago. I’m still optimistic that it will happen one day though, and over the last couple of days I’ve been thinking of things which I can do to gain more confidence and get noticed more amongst my co-workers – for example arranging a team meal every 3 months or so. That’s just one example; I’ve thought of several other things I could do as well, to show more initiative.
On to other subjects now – in my previous post I mentioned that I met my friend Kay for the first time in a couple of years. It seems that her and my other best friend Naomi aren’t as close as they were in the past. So I had an idea that I would try to arrange an outing for all 3 of us. It would be the first time in several years that all 3 of us would be together. I haven’t had a chance to arrange anything yet, but I had a nightmare about it a couple of nights ago. I dreamed that I was organising a meal one evening, but when I invited Naomi she said that she would be busy babysitting that evening and that she wouldn’t be able to go. In the dream I was suspecting that she was afraid of us all being together again, but somehow I managed to negotiate a deal so that another member of her family would do the babysitting instead, so that Naomi would be able to go. But, in the dream, when the evening arrived and we were having our meal, Naomi and Kay started arguing about why
they hadn’t met up for such a long time, and each was blaming the other. I just sat there in the middle, trying not to get involved. By the end of the evening, I dreaded having organised the outing in the first place. That was a horrible dream, and I just hope it won’t come true. 
