Yikes...
I got a SERIOUS "Emily, you act like a huge bitch and you need to find a way to change that FAST" talk in work this morning :(
The bad thing is I know this about me... I know that its very easy for me to go from zero to "snide bitch" the moment something happens or is said that irritates or annoys me. Even small things. And Rich is right, it's gotten progressively worse since I've started working here.
To be honest, though, I wasn't really bitchy UNTIL I started working here =\
Rich seems to think that basic stress relief is the core answer, but I'm skeptical. Yes, owning the house now has the potential to be a big stress, but it hasn't affected me as deeply as its affecting Chris... seeing as he's the one more involved with the house while I'm at work. Rich also doesn't think that this behavior is something that can be changed by will alone, but I personally disagree... I just think I've been lazy about changing it (mostly because I haven't received the appropriate punishment or wake-up call until now?)
There's two core things that I need to adjust: my relations with the sales people, and my relations with clients.
I don't have a high opinion of our current sales staff, as I've probably written about before. Half of them don't do what they are supposed to, and it makes our job in the graphics room unnecessarily hard/complicated. In my mind, the time for being nice and offering positive reinforcement to get them to adjust how they work passed a year ago (our "senior" sales staff members are the biggest culprits). Thus, I've taken to making sharp remarks and having my reaction to them illustrate JUST how I feel about how they're making MY job more complicated and difficult. Obviously being nice didn't work.
This is how I currently feel about this matter, and it's been revealed to me that I need to change how I feel about it. I'm having trouble reconciling this. How can I just smile and nod and say "thank you" when a sales person comes up to me with a new account that blatantly violates all the standards we've set forth for them, to make THEIR jobs easier? And that aside, when I'm offering positive feedback about something, it seems to come out aggressive and negative... I'm not sure about how to change how that is presented without feeling confident that what I'm saying is sinking in.
That might be the bottom of what's driving this part of my behavior... I don't want to be ignored. Yet things keep happening over and over that demonstrate that the sales staff is apparently ignoring what the graphics department says.
A solution may be to start viewing situations from the perspective of "don't shoot the messenger"... with the sales staff being the messengers. Which in large part, they are. They are simply trying to convey the information on behalf of the clients they just signed. And part of this solution would be to completely mentally remove the sales staff from the graphics - client - sales equation, forget about the standards we've requested they adhere to when getting graphic information, forget about their participation in selling the ad design to the client.
That last part especially I should just let go... I'm led to understand that the sales department simply doesn't have the time to sell and resell clients on every little thing, and the graphics department should be doing more with interacting with the clients directly. We have done all we can to make it easy for the sales department in regards to collecting graphic info (and we even intend to make it easier with more "flyers" we're developing as leave-behinds).
Another part of the solution is to keep my mouth shut and keep my comments to myself. At least when sales people are in hearing distance. Actually, that might just be step 1.
The second core thing: how I relate to clients.
A few things seem to keep going wrong whenever I write emails to clients that involve statements other than "thanks for the approval" or "thanks, I got the changes!" or "sorry, you'll need to talk to your sales rep about that". If you read my journal, you've read about the time someone asked me for input on what offer to use, and flipped their shit when I gave them input. That still confuses me to this day. It could be something in my "formal correspondence language" that seems really aggressive or hostile?
I am more aware of the importance of my interaction with the clients than I am of my interaction with the sales staff. I sort of cringe myself whenever I feel the need to send a somewhat lengthy email to a client to discuss their ad concept (IE, their kids in the ads, or the need for "white space", or whatever). Because I'm already very wary that they're going to come back screaming that I'm not doing what they request like that first guy, so many months ago. And I try REALLY HARD not to necessitate sending these people an email to steer them in more appropriate directions, because I feel less is more...
I'd really like to develop a series of "stock" emails to address some of these design issues. Nice little emails, the shorter the better, non-confrontational, helpful, something that shows professionalism and expertise without hitting them over the head with it.
I know that in the end the client is always right, and the best we can do as designers is try to make sure their ad doesn't look like complete shit based on the input they've given us. There is always going to be the people who flounce off our contact lists because their ad campaign doesn't fulfill their expectations, and blame it on the ad design (when they're the ones who dictated every little detail). All we can do is our best.
The first solution for this, as Rich put it to me this morning, is to embrace "less is more". Don't communicate with the clients in any huge meaningful way except to acknowledge whatever they've told me. Specifically in regards to clients saying they don't want to be in our up-coming issues (I guess someone flipped his shit yesterday when I interpreted his replies to mean that he didn't want to be in our magazine "until he says so"... historically that's meant "don't call me, I'll call you" and it's basically a canceled account. So I had written a note to confirm this status and apparently I had interpreted his comments incorrectly.)
I DO get frustrated when I develop a good looking ad and the client completely tears it apart... I think we all do. When "art" is something you do every day, it's your career, you want it to grow and develop, you want it to be beautiful to the extent that it can be. When a client "ruins" it, it's very discouraging. But it's also part of my job :\. It's going to happen and I need to deal with it. The hard part is, I think, all the art I am currently creating in my life is centered about my job, and thus all of it is subject to someone else's review and correction. As I've written several times before, I need to work on my own art. I think that would give me a lot more creative satisfaction, and balance out the creative destruction happening at work.
That could probably fall under "stress relief" as well, haha. Running does too, whiiich I NEED TO DO MORE OF if I want to do this run in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS! (Rich, of course, is the one who told me that runners have less stress in the long run.)
I'm a work in progress.
The bad thing is I know this about me... I know that its very easy for me to go from zero to "snide bitch" the moment something happens or is said that irritates or annoys me. Even small things. And Rich is right, it's gotten progressively worse since I've started working here.
To be honest, though, I wasn't really bitchy UNTIL I started working here =\
Rich seems to think that basic stress relief is the core answer, but I'm skeptical. Yes, owning the house now has the potential to be a big stress, but it hasn't affected me as deeply as its affecting Chris... seeing as he's the one more involved with the house while I'm at work. Rich also doesn't think that this behavior is something that can be changed by will alone, but I personally disagree... I just think I've been lazy about changing it (mostly because I haven't received the appropriate punishment or wake-up call until now?)
There's two core things that I need to adjust: my relations with the sales people, and my relations with clients.
I don't have a high opinion of our current sales staff, as I've probably written about before. Half of them don't do what they are supposed to, and it makes our job in the graphics room unnecessarily hard/complicated. In my mind, the time for being nice and offering positive reinforcement to get them to adjust how they work passed a year ago (our "senior" sales staff members are the biggest culprits). Thus, I've taken to making sharp remarks and having my reaction to them illustrate JUST how I feel about how they're making MY job more complicated and difficult. Obviously being nice didn't work.
This is how I currently feel about this matter, and it's been revealed to me that I need to change how I feel about it. I'm having trouble reconciling this. How can I just smile and nod and say "thank you" when a sales person comes up to me with a new account that blatantly violates all the standards we've set forth for them, to make THEIR jobs easier? And that aside, when I'm offering positive feedback about something, it seems to come out aggressive and negative... I'm not sure about how to change how that is presented without feeling confident that what I'm saying is sinking in.
That might be the bottom of what's driving this part of my behavior... I don't want to be ignored. Yet things keep happening over and over that demonstrate that the sales staff is apparently ignoring what the graphics department says.
A solution may be to start viewing situations from the perspective of "don't shoot the messenger"... with the sales staff being the messengers. Which in large part, they are. They are simply trying to convey the information on behalf of the clients they just signed. And part of this solution would be to completely mentally remove the sales staff from the graphics - client - sales equation, forget about the standards we've requested they adhere to when getting graphic information, forget about their participation in selling the ad design to the client.
That last part especially I should just let go... I'm led to understand that the sales department simply doesn't have the time to sell and resell clients on every little thing, and the graphics department should be doing more with interacting with the clients directly. We have done all we can to make it easy for the sales department in regards to collecting graphic info (and we even intend to make it easier with more "flyers" we're developing as leave-behinds).
Another part of the solution is to keep my mouth shut and keep my comments to myself. At least when sales people are in hearing distance. Actually, that might just be step 1.
The second core thing: how I relate to clients.
A few things seem to keep going wrong whenever I write emails to clients that involve statements other than "thanks for the approval" or "thanks, I got the changes!" or "sorry, you'll need to talk to your sales rep about that". If you read my journal, you've read about the time someone asked me for input on what offer to use, and flipped their shit when I gave them input. That still confuses me to this day. It could be something in my "formal correspondence language" that seems really aggressive or hostile?
I am more aware of the importance of my interaction with the clients than I am of my interaction with the sales staff. I sort of cringe myself whenever I feel the need to send a somewhat lengthy email to a client to discuss their ad concept (IE, their kids in the ads, or the need for "white space", or whatever). Because I'm already very wary that they're going to come back screaming that I'm not doing what they request like that first guy, so many months ago. And I try REALLY HARD not to necessitate sending these people an email to steer them in more appropriate directions, because I feel less is more...
I'd really like to develop a series of "stock" emails to address some of these design issues. Nice little emails, the shorter the better, non-confrontational, helpful, something that shows professionalism and expertise without hitting them over the head with it.
I know that in the end the client is always right, and the best we can do as designers is try to make sure their ad doesn't look like complete shit based on the input they've given us. There is always going to be the people who flounce off our contact lists because their ad campaign doesn't fulfill their expectations, and blame it on the ad design (when they're the ones who dictated every little detail). All we can do is our best.
The first solution for this, as Rich put it to me this morning, is to embrace "less is more". Don't communicate with the clients in any huge meaningful way except to acknowledge whatever they've told me. Specifically in regards to clients saying they don't want to be in our up-coming issues (I guess someone flipped his shit yesterday when I interpreted his replies to mean that he didn't want to be in our magazine "until he says so"... historically that's meant "don't call me, I'll call you" and it's basically a canceled account. So I had written a note to confirm this status and apparently I had interpreted his comments incorrectly.)
I DO get frustrated when I develop a good looking ad and the client completely tears it apart... I think we all do. When "art" is something you do every day, it's your career, you want it to grow and develop, you want it to be beautiful to the extent that it can be. When a client "ruins" it, it's very discouraging. But it's also part of my job :\. It's going to happen and I need to deal with it. The hard part is, I think, all the art I am currently creating in my life is centered about my job, and thus all of it is subject to someone else's review and correction. As I've written several times before, I need to work on my own art. I think that would give me a lot more creative satisfaction, and balance out the creative destruction happening at work.
That could probably fall under "stress relief" as well, haha. Running does too, whiiich I NEED TO DO MORE OF if I want to do this run in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS! (Rich, of course, is the one who told me that runners have less stress in the long run.)
I'm a work in progress.