Your Life and Business

Emily had just finished checking her appointments for the next day – it had been a very busy working day at the end of the year. She looked through the window and saw hundreds of starry snowflakes ...

 It was a nice and quiet evening - just a winter evening that John always enjoyed after a working day. He was sipping red wine and listening to music. Suddenly he recognized a well-known melody of the song “Why Does my Heart Feel so Bad?”

Ruth was sitting at her desk looking for something in her bag. It was an early Tuesday afternoon – just an ordinary working day. “Oh, I hate this bag. Each time when I want to find aspirin I can never find it. Maybe the bag is too big…,” Ruth mumbled. “Do you have a headache? Can I help you?” Mike asked her empathetically. Ruth nodded: “Thank you. I’ve just had a lunch with a colleague. She was talking non-stop and it made me crazy. Why can’t people listen?”

“Actually, I wanted to leave earlier today,” Emily said looking at her watch “it’s 17h30… John is still having a meeting with Ron. If John comes …” She frowned and sighed fixing her eyes on her watch again: “Why should work always come first?”

It was the second day of a very unusual teambuilding event. Ruth was hurriedly sipping coffee thinking about John’s unexpected idea of delegating authority to the team. She was glad that he was not going to change the team model. However, she knew John well enough and guessed there might be some hidden thoughts or plans.

It was a nice sunny summer’s day. John and his team were on their way to a countryside hotel where they were going to spend two days together. It was the so-called team-building event that they had every year. Each time it was almost the same – some sport activities, workshops, some kind of treasure hunt.

John came back to the office after a long afternoon meeting and was extremely glad to see all his team members lively discussing something. It was 17h30, the end of the working day, but he had some time for sharing thoughts and hearing feedback for the day. Interestingly, such discussions often helped him to bring the whole team together.