I would blog about my lesson with Dianne yesterday, but I feel more confident about my leadership skills in the workplace today. So….

Today at work I led my first conference call as new chair of a group that I never really even wanted to join.  Peer pressure! What ever happened to the good ole days when it got you high and addicted to cleaning solvents?  This still may. I do love my scented markers. BUT I could quit anytime. 

Anyway, these calls usually last in excess of the allotted hour put aside. Thanks to me and my facilitation skills, I shuffled things along at a clip that got us over and out within 24 minutes. AND I ate my and half my bosses lunch at the same time! I cut people off mid-sentence by saying definitive things like, "Okay, well if no one has anything else on that subject…" my voice escalating, and adding in a bit of humming if they tried to continue.  For topics that really threatened to ramp up, regardless of my humming, I chewed food directly into the mouthpiece. Crunch crunch crunch.  It's hard to want to go on and on about data standards when someone is eating carrots and corn chips on the other end of the line. 

What I've found is that sentences don't always NEED to be finished. 
Especially when they contain the same information stated in a slightly
different way or expounded upon to a degree that makes your teeth itch
and your hands yearn to slap something. I find that the lives of those sentences should end before they become a paragraph and cut into someone's google-searching/emailing time.

Finally I suggested to the group, after a few complaints that I wasn't letting anyone talk, that for next time instead of whole sentences we should just stick to nouns, with everyone allowed 3 adjectives each. 

By then no one was saying much and I was full.