5 Things I Did As An Employee That I'm Sorry For

As an employee under the direction of other employees who were under the direction of other employees, you do things that rub up against your principles and end up in places that you never thought you would. And whilst most of my career thus-far has been amazing, there have been some less-than-stellar moments.

So in the spirit of countering a Trump-ian world where no one apologises for anything for fear of appearing weak, I present the Top 5 things I am sorry for, that I did as an employee of the several companies I've worked for.

I'm sorry that I allowed job applicants to be rejected due to a perceived lack of "cultural fit"

I recall being part of the hiring process in one company where we were considering three very equally-experienced and capable employees. Only one of them was considered to be a good "cultural fit" with that predominantly Caucasian company. I recall my immediate manager advising me that a certain executive manager wouldn't like the other two, and that it will smooth out our path to getting what we want if we choose the Caucasian employee. I was wracked with guilt over being manipulated in to supporting this move for years. It was a douche of a move, illegal, and ran against everything I stood for when it comes to ending unfair discrimination and protecting the rights of all current and potential employees. I am absolutely and truly sorry for this and have since contacted those candidates on LinkedIn personally to apologise. Both of them expressed that this was a common occurrence in that particular industry and they simply stopped applying for positions with that company and that industry as a whole. That is a sad loss to an industry that is battling a loss of relevance and an increased tone-deafness when it comes to it's target market.

I'm sorry that I was such a poor trainer

In another job I was both a worker of the job and a trainer of new employees. And, in hindsight, I really did suck at training the newbies. I was so busy doing the work that had to be done that I had no time to take new employees through a comprehensive training program to give them the best shot at succeeding at their new roles. I did speak out about this various times with this employer, but the same excuses always came back; "this is the nature of our industry," "the work has to be done," "just do the best you can with the time you have." It was an insult to the new employees that came and went as they were chewed-up and spat-out by an industry that didn't give them the support they needed and then promptly removed them when they, unsurprisingly, didn't perform.

I'm sorry that I was so angry all the time

The two points above probably give a touch of context as to why I was so angry all the time at work. But that's no excuse. I was angry because my work life was out of control, my personal life was in free-fall and I couldn't seem to make any part of my life work for me. I couldn't get traction at work because I was constantly in a fight against a status-quo that wouldn't budge. I remember hearing about some bible verse that stated that "hope deferred makes the heart grow sick." And that was definitely the case. There was always this promise of better days ahead, a time when those around me would see the light and understand that I was only trying to preserve that company's future by preparing it for a future it couldn't escape. But those better days never came. And I just got angrier and angrier. I'll cop that one entirely for myself. Their decisions should have had no impact on my mood. Mood is a decision and I chose anger. Which alienated me more from others.

I'm sorry that I allowed people to be unfairly treated

I have worked from some amazing managers. One particularly I tend to remember as a mentor, rather than a manager. But anyone in a position of power in an organisation has had to do some underhanded things to get where they have. Results often come from having to make hard decisions and doing things you never thought you'd ever find yourself doing. And sometimes you just do those things because it will help progress your career, give you greater status or simply remove an annoying problem. I participated in the "pushing out" of people from various jobs I've held. People who, just as often as not, were unfairly pressured to terminate their own employment by making their life at work so difficult and their day so micro-managed that they were left with little option but to leave of their own accord. And there is no one specific employer of mine in the past that I am calling out on this. This is common practice across many companies and industries. It saves a lot of HR time and money if you can pressure someone in to leaving if you have little or no grounds with which to terminate them yourself. I am yet to make my way around to all the people that were affected by this, where I was also involved, but I will start that journey soon and offer my apologies.

I'm sorry that I was so bad at communicating my vision

I could never be accused of having a lack of vision, but the ability to communicate that vision to people who don't share the inside of my mind is key to my former failings at getting people to follow me off in to a brave new world. The problem with a "vision" is that it's often abstract and blurry, even inside our own minds. My vision for where to take my roles in the past was built on ideas that hadn't been baked for quite enough time in the oven. Especially at those times when I'd be called-upon to share them. I'd have notebooks full of ideas, tactics, strategies and tools that I'd then have to hurriedly form in to coherent sentences to present to executives and other employees. The pace of the world I was working in was so hectic that there simply wasn't time to properly plan and consider contingencies, so when I was in front of the people who mattered, I simply didn't have all the answers I needed. So yeah, I'm sorry that sometimes my vision seemed a little vague.

Don't get me wrong, there is a tonne of things I am thankful for when it came to being an employee, and I'll get to those as well. But let's consider this a bit of a "clearing" that I needed to do in order to really appreciate the good stuff I took away from my former "indentured servitude."

Dante St James is the founder of Clickstarter, a digital, broadcasting and workshop-based marketing agency based in Darwin, Australia with development and booking hubs on the Sunshine Coast, in Manila and Bengaluru.

Originally published at https://www.clickstarter.com.au/articles/14-5-things-i-did-as-an-employee-that-i-m-sorry-for