I had my retirement lunch today with my team, along with a few people who showed up unexpectedly from past, and it was really wonderful. I am just myself at work the same as I am in life. I put people first, mentor people and coach them, treat them as unique and wonderful and worth loving.
I’ve done my job as a technical editor as a job that I loved, but still, it was a job. It used my passions and skills and talents. But the more important part was helping other people improve their skills, find their passions, and be released into what made them who they were.
Not everyone was going to be a technical writer, so I helped everyone figure out what it is that they felt created to do, and I helped them find roles and jobs – sometimes in my company, sometimes in others – where they could fly.
It was nice to see some of that acknowledged, yes, but because it was nice to know that I had affected people in a good way. What better send off than that, right?
But then someone spoke up who knew the people I worked with 20 and 30 years ago, who had spontaneously told him about my career with them and how I worked with them, and they gave me (vicariously) another wonderful send off.
I never “tried” to be a good man or an honest man or a fair man. I just tried to find myself and tried to find the best of “me” that there was, and I lived it out as openly and as freely as I could.
I was happiest seeing people find out how incredible they were. I was happiest seeing people come alive and figure out that just because other teams and other employers treated them like replaceable cogs wasn’t their fault, that they were incredible.
Yes, I had fun. I had an enjoyable life and career, and I could not do anything that I could not do. That is, I just could not be cruel or indifferent or careless to people.
Often that meant that sometimes I didn’t share my own voice, but I knew that people mattered more than “being right.”
I shared that my only difficulties in my long career had been with management that saw me as another cog, that tried to put me into roles I wasn’t suited for, and then judging me for failure when the decision to be in that role was theirs.
People usually don’t do a bad job on purpose. Most people want to do a good job, and only lack of training or information, or worse, failed trust and resentment, lead to doing a bad job.
So I worked to keep people centered and human.
I left the job because I’m 70. I regret leaving because I loved my job. But all those people I mentored and developed and encouraged and released – they’re all taking up their rightful place now in their careers, and nothing could make me happier than seeing them succeed.