PEOPLE & PERFORMANCE

PEOPLE & PERFORMANCE: September 1996 issue back to articles menu

LIFE WITH PUNTER

TOPIC: Living the life of a sky-rocket

It sneaks up on you, you know. Insidiously, furtively, like a cat-burglar in the night. Before you know it, the mobile phone has become part of your anatomy, an umbilical connection to your career, as is the fax machine, the two computers who rule the desk-top like hi-tech landlords forever expanding sideways, the pilot’s bag with tomorrow’s seminar inside it and today’s on the floor beside it (I’ll clean it up later), the video-tapes spread in glorious confusion ("don’t move those boxes - I know what’s in them") and the diary, looking dog-eared and weary from its continuous fight for supremacy on a desk covered in client files, master workbooks, urgent faxes and bank statements. Overseeing all like a detached spectator is the Sasco year-planner with its coloured magnetic tags, saved from the confusion only by its location - on the wall, being physically impossible to stack stuff on it. And that’s just the physical symptoms.

The mental symptoms are harder to ignore - you can’t just shut the door and pretend that the Gremlins of the Night will clean up. Part of the brain continuously ranges ahead like a Scout in the Wild West, looking over the next ridge to see what lies beyond and trying to see where the war-parties are lying in ambush. Is everything ready for tomorrow? And the next day, and the next..... and when are you going to write the participant’s manual for that new programme next week......

Whether you are an in-house trainer or an independent, the fact is that if you have a one-day programme to run, then that whole day is committed 100% to the running of that programme - you can’t think about the new Appraisals programme and the recent PG summary’s to do with Unjustifiable Action to the Employee’s Disadvantage that you’re going to include in it, while you’re in the middle of facilitating Day One of Supervisor Stage One. Well, I can’t anyway. You may have a stereo brain, I don’t.

Which means that all the administrative, organisational and creative stuff has to be done at night or the weekend. After a while, it becomes normal, accepted, part of the job. Without you realising it, the monster has snuck up on you and infiltrated your defences. All around you, workshop participants are coughing and sneezing with the ‘flu, - you feel a mixture of irritation that they’re here spreading their bugs around, and admiration that they cared enough to come anyway - but somehow you seem to be wearing a trendy blue one-piece body suit with a big red ‘S’ on the front, untouchable.

For now.... Last year, my blue one-piece must have got a hole in it somewhere. I had the ‘flu continuously for nearly four months, relapse after relapse. I became the Amoxil King, contributing significant sums to both my Doctor and the Chemist. On advice, ("would you like to see 50, Steve?") I took myself off to sunny climes for six days. In effect, I took the ‘flu to Tahiti, wined it, dined it, got an expensive French doctor to look at it, gave it a sun-tan and lots of bed rest, and brought it back with me, much refreshed. I, on the other hand, still had the ‘flu and felt like death warmed up. This year, at the beginning of the year (before the Sasco had a chance to determine my fate) I ruled out ten days in the middle of July, right in our peak season, and marked them ‘HOLIDAY’. To be on the safe side, I then ruled out the three days either side of it, too. Even at that stage, the commercial side of my brain was nagging away about ‘lost revenue’.... But with a lot of help & support - and in spite of clients who, looking at my diary, made subtle and not-so-subtle comments about "how well I must be doing if I could afford a holiday", I stuck to my guns.

A hobbie-cat has just zoomed past my window with a big ‘S’ on it. There’s irony there, somewhere. The temperature is hovering around 30 degrees, a few billowy clouds around. My companion is on the beach somewhere, smothered in Le Tan or something and gently basting. Oh, didn’t I mention? I’m in Fiji. I don’t have the ‘flu, but one or two bits of me are a tad red. I’ve sneaked back to the room, dragged the lap-top out of its hiding place (I had to smuggle it into the suitcase at the last minute wrapped in a T shirt to get past the monster-detector), and shortly I’ll be back on the beach. I’ve only phoned my Associates once, it’s been 7 days now, and the world is carrying on without me. I’m not sure whether to feel indignant or reassured.

If the message I’m trying to get across is unclear, then perhaps the metaphor of a sky-rocket may help. Lots of noise, dizzying speed, a sense of exhilaration, bright light, lots of colour, and an appreciative audience. But it’s over so fast. And who gives a toss what happens to the burned-out stick? Does anyone care where it falls?

I’m still learning about stress, from the experiential rather than the academic. I haven’t got it right yet - I’m tackling the overwork but I’ve yet to make a start on the smoking and the lack of fitness, and I’ll make mistakes, too. But you’ve got to start somewhere - my research tells me that the physical effects of stress may not appear until a couple of years after the stress was experienced (Holmes & Raha, University of Washington). Or you can ignore the signs, and be a skyrocket.....

Carpe Diem

steve@sta.co.nz back to articles menu