seasons don't fear the reaper

Today was my first meeting with a woman who is going to give me some professional coaching (similar to a life coach, except in this case, it's a woman w/actual professional experience, rather than Tammy, who would probably on coach me into subsiding on sarcasm and cigarettes - not that there's anything wrong with that!). The coaching is part of a larger program that my company pays for, which involves a two-day training in a couple of weeks on conscious leadership. It also includes one of those absurdly-long (in this case, 250-question) surveys which require you to rank how you feel you are on a wide range of attributes. Not only does the participant fill out a survey, but each participant nominates up to eight coworkers to fill out the same survey. Today's session was the pre-training debrief, and included a discussion of how my personal ratings compared to my peers' feedback.

This is all v. interesting stuff to me - while I may be an ENTJ on the Myers-Briggs test (which makes me a fieldmarshal), I still have a high desire to make sure that I play well with others (a trait that was probably beaten into me because I went to a rural school - if I had gone to an elite private school on one of the coasts, I probably would have turned out completely bitchy and spoiled). So I recognize the areas where I have a tendency to perform badly, and I'm interested in improving them. The interesting thing was that I was harder on myself than my peers perceive me in most categories; after reading through a ton of stuff tonight, here's how things fall out on the 12 categories:

Positive/Constructive Styles:
1) Humanistic/Encouraging (ability to see good in others) - unrecognized strength
2) Affiliative (ability to work on teams and make relationships) - confirmed strength
3) Achievement - confirmed strength
4) Self-actualizing - blind spot (I know myself pretty well and have a 'rich inner life', but don't always share this with others, so they think I'm weaker in this)

Defensive/Passive Styles:
5) Approval (seeking it from others) - unrecognized strength (I seek it more than people think I do)
6) Conventional (conforming too much) - confirmed strength (so strong it might circle back to weakness - I hate conforming)
7) Dependent (depending on others too much) - confirmed strength
8) Avoidance - border between strength and stumbling block

Defensive/Aggressive Styles:
9) Oppositional - stumbling block (my coach said this may be a result of how sarcastic I am; sarcasm can be seen as opposing things even when I just intend it to be funny)
10) Power (seeking power to make oneself feel better) - border between strength and stumbling block (others don't see me seeking power, but I think I do - but it's probably a good thing that my peers don't see me as a power-grasping bitch)
11) Competitive - unrecognized strength (internally I'm pretty competitive, but my peers don't see it as much)
12) Perfectionistic - on the line between strength and stumbling block

So the goal of all this is to get yourself as high on the positive/constructive styles, and as low as possible on the passive and aggressive defensive styles.

I wasn't surprised by much; I was sad to see that my sarcasm comes across as oppositional (I need to stop calling people monkeys when they do dumb things, apparently), but I was relieved to see that my competitiveness and my sometimes-driven approach to tasks isn't seriously impairing my work relationships. But, I'm very interested to take this two-day workshop, and I think the coaching sessions will be incredibly useful in terms of learning how to develop my leadership style in the most effective way.

It's amazing how satisfied I feel at work, even though my responsibilities and headaches have grown exponentially over the past few weeks. I guess I feel like I'm finally in a position where I have so much to learn and so much that I can contribute - if I intend to stay in business, then there's probably not many other places I could be right now where I could be learning this much, this fast.

The one concern is my complete lack of work-life balance; when people asked me today what I'm going to do this weekend, I had absolutely no answer, because the real answer was that I intend to work all weekend, but I don't want to say that to the people who report to me because I don't want them to think that I expect them to work this hard. Sure, I'll probably do a couple of random fun things, and I desperately need to clean my apartment (it's getting to the point where I'm thinking about hiring a cleaning service, I just can't keep up with my household chores, but I also abhor a dirty apartment), but it used to be that I would have my weeks and weekends booked solid, and I no longer make many plans. It's fine - I have hermit-ish tendencies anyway, I have a strong desire to excel in my current role, and I do see friends when I need/want to see them, but I don't want to become a hermit too quickly since I'm still only 25.

Anyway, that's what's going on with me right now - life is good, albeit stressful, and I know that I'm not taking care of myself, so I need to start setting some boundaries so that I don't burn out and/or die from the pressure. I suppose that contradicts the 'life is good' statement, but I am genuinely happy right now, despite everything. Probably because I like to be 'x despite everything', since that implies a challenge overcome. Anyway, I'm going to try to put my apartment in some semblance of order before going to bed - wish me luck!