Welcome to the Outrageous Workplace Stories series of the podcast. In these episodes, you’ll see ways to handle even the toughest of workplace situations with power and impact  while making humanity a priority.  These stories shaped how I went from receptionist to HR manager in four short years  without a degree, without the qualifications or experience that you would have thought I needed.  This series is designed  to help you turn everyday challenges into momentum for your next level,  no matter where you’re at right now. of staying grounded in your humanity and being true to who you are as a person is important to you. Yet, also want to get to your next level. You want to earn more money and you want to create a professional life you’re proud of. That is also at the top of your list. I’m here to tell you that you can do both. And this is where you start. Let’s go. Hey, you look like you have a big F you on your forehead. Can I ask what’s going on? 13 videos about workplace. stories that you never thought would happen. Day three. I used to plan corporate events before I moved into HR. I had to take over and help the event planning team. And I found myself in a place where I had to take over this yearly event for the company of 500 people. That’s another story. I’m supposed to be on the track to HR and all of a sudden I’ve been put in charge of this huge event, which I wasn’t planning. But anyway, I’m in charge of this huge event. And it’s like developers and salespeople and marketing people, and they’ve all traveled from different places in the world to come to this annual meeting that the company has. And I was all of a sudden put in charge of organizing it. I’d never planned a huge event like this before. One of the things in the event was called a hackathon for the developers, because the developers made up the majority of the staff. I wasn’t doing the hackathon. I wasn’t involved in it. So I was just walking around, you know, making sure everybody had what they needed and, making sure everything was going well. and I saw somebody sitting  at one of the tables, she was supposed to be participating, so she was sitting there and she looked very grumpy, she wasn’t interacting, she wasn’t engaging, she definitely wasn’t having fun.  So I went up to her and I said, hey, you look like you have a big F-U on your forehead, can I ask what’s going on?  This is just me, I will go up and ask people questions because I wanna know what’s going on with them.  I don’t know how you would respond if someone came up and asked you that, but. someone’s not gonna expect you to come and do this, which is what I was planning. I wanted to break her pattern. So she looks at me and she goes,  huh, is that what I look like?  And she kind of laughed and became self-aware in that moment.  And then I was like, yeah, but it’s okay. It’s cool. What’s going on?  So then she starts telling me, I don’t feel like there’s anything really for me to do because I’m not a developer.  I’m in UX and there’s nothing for the UX people to do. She was feeling irritated at this point. So I just pulled up a chair and I said, okay, cool. Tell me what you think you would have done in this situation. If you were planning this event  and you were taking the UX people into consideration, what do you think you would do? Give me three things.  She started talking to me. She started  getting some ideas and she didn’t know, right? She’s like, maybe this or maybe that, maybe we could have gone for a walk or something. Cause if I had known this was happening, I wouldn’t be here. And  she was grumpy about it, but I was not taking it personally at all. I wasn’t mad at her. I was hearing her out. And just because I heard her ideas, it doesn’t mean that I’m gonna do them. It doesn’t mean that immediately we have to go and make her happy.  It’s not people pleasing, it’s hearing somebody out and that is often enough.  So after that,  we had a great relationship. She was happy that I heard her out. She understood that I couldn’t go and rearrange everything right now, even if I could, I wasn’t going to.  We often think that it’s our job to make everybody happy all the time. And when you’re planning an event for 500 people,  I don’t have to tell you that you can’t make everybody happy.  With her, all I did was listen to her. All I did was go up to her, call out her facial expression, have a bit of a laugh about it, and then said to her, hey, what would you do?  And from there, we ended up talking, we had a good relationship. She was still not happy. She still didn’t get what she wanted, but she was  much happier to be heard out, to be acknowledged, to be seen, to be heard, than quietly see the… and be upset and not tell anybody. Curiosity always wins and depersonalizing  what the person says. That was me saying, hey, I’m open to what you have to say, I wanna hear it.  Doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it right now, doesn’t mean I’m gonna fix everything for you,  but it means I wanna hear what you have to say, I’m interested, you have insight I don’t have, please share it. When we see somebody who is grumpy, when we see someone who is unhappy,  we can hear them out without…  Dropping everything to please them if they expect that that’s on them what we need to do as humans is hear what other people have to say and it doesn’t mean we have to implement everything everybody has to say that Helped our relationship. We were on very good terms We had fun together  when I had something that involved UX I would always send her an email and say hey, can I get your thoughts on this?  She really appreciated that and that is how I Created my connections one of the ways in which I created my connections throughout the company in order to get myself from just somebody who was running around doing things for people, getting coffee, answering phones,  to being somebody who was actually in charge of the HR department and making a difference in how hiring was done and how people were moving through their day-to-day lives and actually being the person that people were  wanting to come to and listen to  and felt supported by. My name is Natalie Fisher. I help people land great jobs first and then I help them thrive in those jobs  by being professionally human the whole way  without abandoning themselves in the process  without having to  throw anybody under the bus  to get to the top. We can do this in a professional human manner  and it can be really enjoyable and fulfilling. I hope you’re following. Click the link below to subscribe and get all the videos sent to you  and I will see you in the next one.  If you enjoyed that story  and you gleaned something from it,  if you want to learn how to master your professional life  while being both impactful yet deeply human, Join the waitlist for a professionally human. The link is in the show notes. I can’t wait for you to see what I have in store.