I'm Barack Obama

and I approve this blog post!

Let me start from the beginning. Last week, I was serving as a mentor for some new hires. They call it On The Job training coach. The way that works is this: There is one coach responsible for every 2 new hires. Our job is to get them acclimated to our computer systems, our clients, basically get them ready to be successful in their new job. There are 3 weeks of OJT. Each week, the number of coaches is reduced. The 2nd week the ratio is 3 to 1, the last week its 5 to 1. The way that we determine which coaches will return each week is kind of like "Survivor." The new hires do a survey evaluating their coach and the ones with the highest scores stay "on the island." This training class, the OJT manager decided to add an additional wrinkle to the voting process. This time, not only do the new hires evaluate you, the fellow coaches also do a survey.

This brings us to Friday. The work week officially ended at 7 PM. The only thing left to do was to find out which coaches would be returning the following week. The OJT manager decided to not only tell us who was returning, but to also give us feedback as to why or why not. She did it in alphabetical order, and with my last name starting with W, I was the last of the 8 coaches to find out. I sat there for 55 minutes just waiting. I wasn't anxious, because I knew it was a popularity contest that I had no control over. If I came back, fine, if not, that was okay too. At least I had one week of doing no work. When she finally called me, I was ready for either eventuality.

She started going over my scores. My mentees graded me perfect 10s, the highest possible score. They had some nice things to say about me. I already knew this because even though they weren't supposed to discuss their responses with me, they did. Then came the peer reviews. Mostly 9s and 10s from the first few with some good feedback. I was feeling pretty good about my chances for return. Then the manager reads the last one...

"Rashan can be kind of arrogant. He thinks he knows everything and often will disagree with other coaches in front of new hires."

What!?!? That was a bit of a shock. This is not the first time I've been called arrogant, but not in the training class. I had no idea where this was coming from. I had no run ins with anyone, or no occasions where I corrected any of my fellow coaches. I didn't understand this one. The manager continued.

"Rashan can be elitist. He doesn't participate with the rest of the coaches"

Word?!? I talk to everyone. I remembered specific examples when I not only shared my ideas, but asked for input from my peers. I'm an elitist in real life, but I'm not that way at work. This was a collaborative effort and I made a concious effort to contribute to the team environment.

"Rashan does not always communicate well with his fellow coaches. He does what he wants to do regardless of if the rest of us are doing it."

Ummm... yeah, I'm a need an example of that. It's a pretty structured environment. We are all doing the same things at the same time. This sounds like a hater is in the building. This person rated me 6 and 7. The OJT manager was taken aback too. She said that she didn't see any of these characteristics from me and was not sure where it was coming from. She considered it flawed feedback, and would try to get some clarification from the person that provided it. The only thing is, the surveys are anonymous, so she didn't know who it was.

The thing about it is, I do know who gave it. Not exactly, but I can narrow it down to 2 suspects. I hate to say it, but it had to be one of the two white men that were in the group. The others in the group, I could identify by the words they used. Like the black woman who spells "implement" incorrectly all the time and did in the survey. Or the Hispanic guy that always says "elaborate" and did in his survey. Someone calling me "arrogant" and "elitist" was just too reminiscent of what they were saying about Barack. I guess they wanted me to stay in my place and stop being so uppity. My face was hot as I heard this feedback, but I took it like a man, a professional man and kept it moving. With this hater's rating, I was .002 percentage points from being able to return to coaching next week. That didn't bother me too much. If I just didn't get chosen because I wasn't good enough, or if I did something wrong that would be no biggie. But for someone to straight up lie to keep me out of the training class bothered me.

I'm Barack Obama and I'm arrogant and elitist. But also like Barack, I didn't lose control and show them that it bothered me. Sure, inwardly, I was heated by this, but outwardly I kept my cool. Never let them see you sweat.