Busy Bodies Vs. Busy Bees

Busy bodies vs. Busy Bees

This is probably the most controversial article I have written yet around this topic and it hits close to home. We often praise the idea of being multi-skilled or having unique skills you wouldn’t typically find in your realm of work, job specification or even in a management track versus individual contributor track. However, we fail to ask ourselves how do people get these skills outside of classroom or a training facilitated by your organization? For me it’s simple, real life experience or as some fellow Kenyans would say “Kujaribu tu!” (just trying!). I’ve also always wondered why we couldn’t apply more positive connotation to this term “busy body”. When can we start using terms such as Productivity Pirate, Problem solving black belt, Energizer Bunny, Efficiency Guru, Curious Cathy, Collaboration Champion, Prof.(Professor)? From my experience working, negative connotations are bound to breed negative inputs and outcomes - it’s simply the trash in trash out concept.?

Let me share a couple of the views I received on whom or what a “Busybody” is from my networks below:

• “People use that word when they see something in others that they don’t know how to label.”
• “Someone who is looks very preoccupied with things but is doing nothing of value or contributing to society in any way.”
• “A busy body may help or make stuff happen but the issue is that they are meddling. No one asked for their help but BOOM, there is their nose in your business.”
• “To me it's a positive term. A person who’s a force of nature, that knows what they want and has a ton of energy to go after it.”

Vulnerable moment – I have indeed been called a busy body before ; probably not just even once or twice. It’s only in the last 2 years or so that I started to receive it in a negative light but probably because of the way it was delivered. That naming and delivery experience got me doing some research amongst various networks to understand what the term means to them. I have to admit some of the descriptions I fully agreed with and others I disagreed with completely, while a few I was on the fence about. What I have now come to learn is when the term busy body is being used a couple of things come to mind either to the sender or receive of this feedback:

1. You are indeed busy but your colleagues either don’t want your support for various reasons or you are not able to clearly articulate?
2. You could be a team or culture misfit for your organisation. While working at “The Firm” there was a KPI we had for our colleagues called “Office contribution” i.e. what are you contributing to outside your comfort zone or your typical job description and nobody has asked you to “poke your nose” on any other matters which to me meant you were also busy with other activities outside your JD and not specifically assigned to you by your manager.. In this firm, we found ourselves organising committees for office events, consultants hosting skill sessions with recruitment teams at universities for students, and generally lot’s of people raising their hands to volunteer for various day to day matters that keep a typical office running even though it could actually be part of someone’s job. Guess what? I loved it! We were busy inside and outside of our “hives” - departments, friend groups, interest groups you name it.

Moral of the week: I’ll wear my radical recruiter hat this week and say it’s very ok to be a busy body because if you have energy to burn and have done what you need to do in your own house, transfer that energy elsewhere. The trick is to go where you are wanted or at least ask for an invitation to be busy in someone else's lane.

With plenty of ambiguity in how this term is given to others or received, I am going to challenge myself the next time I refer to someone or I am referred to as a “busy body”, I ask why? The why is important because if it’s negative I have a lot to think about. If it’s shared with positive intention, then I guess it’s going to need to be a learning moment for me to keep doing what I do and can do.