After I
had saved my job, I had to start being visible at work. This didn't mean
that I wasn't working hard in the past; it is just that when I started working
there, we had a smaller department, and everyone knew what I was doing, so
there was no need to make sure that I was seen. Also, growing up as a
Presbyterian, you have that typical protestant background of working hard and
being humble. My first assignment was taking over the preparation all of
Keith’s presentations and reviewing and editing all of his reports.
Before I took over, his presentations usually had one or two typos in them, and
considering he was already not liked by a lot of his peers it wasn't helping
his reputation. So, improving the look of the presentations and status
reports made me a little more noticeable and it improved his reputation a little
bit.
However,
a change did not really occur until I was asked to scribe in our war room when
our department had to assist a project resolve some of their issues that caused
a work stoppage. The current war room scribe was one of the managers,
however, when the tension in the room got high, an argument ensued and he threw
the marker on the floor and stormed out. So I got called in to
scribe. I had not been asked to scribe before, because (unknown to me)
management thought that I would not be able to handle the responsibility.
Other managers for various reasons described me to my director as your “typical
angry black woman” who wouldn't be able to handle myself in a stressful situation,
nor would I understand anything that was going on. Essentially, I would
embarrass the department in this high visibility role. Therefore, I had never
been asked to scribe. However, this time, there was no one else to come
in and scribe. When I walked in the room, the tension was high and there
were executives coming through the room and checking the status of the issues;
however, it wasn't anything different than what I had handled in the commercial
industry. The issue lasted about 3 days, before they resolved it and the
project could continue. After that, I was put on the alternate scribe
list. This made me more visible to management and executives outside my
department. Also, after being on the list for a few months, I became the
person, that war room teams looked forward to having as a scribe, sometimes, I
was the person that they requested. Keith also began to notice me too,
because he saw how I worked in teams as well as one on one, so my job was no
longer in jeopardy. This should have been a good thing, but it became a
double- edge sword.
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