Already?

Talk about baptism of fire.

The meeting I had yesterday to introduce myself as the UK front-man for a service we sell to our customer (but deliver from our sister company offshore) made it all sound quite easy. I would just deliver the monthly reports, do the odd meeting here and there and act as a contact point. Everyone agreed the service was stable and nothing really goes wrong. But on day 1 (today) of my name being in the document, I got a call from the customer.

It seems that not all is well with the state of the service, especially over the last few days and some things have come out of the woodwork that have ended up meaning I am sitting on a high priority ticket call, talking about stuff I am only just grasping what it all means.

I feel a bit out of my depth and my initial feeling was “how can I get out of this role, quickly!” I had my head in my hands and my flight mode was in full effect.

I had a similar feeling before, back in the year 2000 when I was made into a team leader. I always said that I didn’t even want to be anyone’s manager. A few days in I was having the same “get me outta here!” feeling. I emailed my manager, explaining that I didn’t want to do the role any more and managed to side-step it. Knowing me, I probably agreed to becoming team leader but don’t really remember why I said yes. That is kind of what happened with this new role today.

I now know that the real reasons for those feelings 24 years ago, was that I was suffering from really bad depression, but didn’t know it. I just had a bad feeling about the team leader role, but it was depression giving me that, not an unwanted career path. However, I still stand by the decision to leave that role and move elsewhere within the company. It did me the world of good to do something else. It also meant I was able to mask my depression for another 7 years, until I really started to break.

I wonder where I am on that scale now?