Friends and Co-workers

Taking a random Wednesday off from work means Thursday is going to be extra busy, and today was that. I was in meetings for a little over five hours and just barely managed to reply to emails that needed attention and attend to tasks that require daily steps forward.

I have it so good because the people I work with are my friends. We even talked about this today in a meeting about our team culture. We do a solid amount of professional development and core values driven discussions. Officially, I am the manager, so my position has a certain nuance. For example, I know I'm not part of conversations that team members have amongst each other. And that's fine. It's natural. I trust everyone, as I would trust any friend, that they all have the best interests of each other and our organization at heart. They never let me down.

The first meeting of the day was a two hour book study session. My team is passionate about growth, so we choose a book regularly, make a schedule, and meet to share what we are learning so we can be better at what we do. The book we're reading now is A Parents' and Teachers' Guide to Bilingualism by Colin Baker. Today we talked about and learned about how parents can facilitate bilingualism for their children regardless of their situation. Some parents are themselves fluent in more than one language and wonder which language to speak to their kids, while other parents are both monolingual but would like to raise their children to become polyglots. 

Discussing these topics and learning new things with co-workers who also happen to be friends barely feels like work.

An after-lunch meeting ended with a member of my team getting some very good news from upper management. After that I led a meeting with the team to do a one-hour deep dive on what it means for an organization or a team to be open and accepting of outsiders. We reaffirmed our commitment to valuing camaraderie, transparency, and most especially trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we love working with our friends. Friends are people you want to help succeed, people you put your own needs aside for, and people who you look forward to seeing every day so you can serve society together and make a difference. 

I am extremely grateful to be able to work with and manage a team of people who are much more to me than just co-workers. 

Sometime after six p.m. when I'm supposed to be done with work, I heard the usual commotion downstairs and Osamu yelling up to me, "Papa! Din-din!" Eri made us some super delicious miso ramen and we all devoured it.