Who is more Reliable? (Part II)

Please check "Who is more Reliable (Part I)".

Here, based on my experiences in the different services during my previous university days, I have learned that being outspoken could also be sometimes misunderstood as negativity. I have served in the administrative fields of some organizations for most of the time and I deemed that it was my duty to feed the true situation to the superiors. However, it turned out that, as an outspoken person, I would sometimes have to argue vehemently to let them know about the true situations, but still was mistaken as a negative person by most of my superiors, before they tried to understand me.

At this juncture, please allow me to cite one incident where I was mistaken and accused of being a negative person. At that time, I was working for the organizing committee in Logistics for hosting National Conference of an organization. To implement this conference, we, organizing members, had to split our tasks for different roles according to our positions such as Marketing and Communication, Event Planner, Logistics, Finance, and Delegate Service. Since my role is logistics, I, with a senior co-worker have to handle Arena Creating, Venue Partnership, and other supplier material reservation. There, the task to find a suitable venue was assigned to us. My senior planned to rent a hall room as a venue for the conference at a low cost to reduce the budget. As I’ve worked for other similar organizations, I was somewhat familiar with this particular situation which would let delegates down due to unsatisfactory services of a low budget facility. So, I knew that for fact and as an outspoken person, I stood out to persuade my superior in order to cancel the current venue reservation, demand more budget from finance officer and arrange another location with better services and facilities. Although I tried to talk her out of it, my superior didn’t take my words into account and did what she thought was right. That remark was just short of accusing me of being a negative person for intending to spend too much budget on venue creating. As a result, on the first day of the conference, we who were responsible for logistics were excoriated by our supervisor for letting the delegates down due to poor service; the hall room wasn’t a soundproof and with a broken projector. So, I had to manage the whole situation and planned to postpone the conference venue for the next days. Then only, delegates were satisfied in that new condition and, my superior was convinced and being a good leader, she admitted her mistakes for not taking my suggestions into account and apologized for misunderstanding me. This was not the only time I was mistaken as a negative person. I had been told many times straight to my face or behind my back that I was a negative person for being an outspoken person.

Part III will be published next week. Stay Tuned!!!