Shame & Disappointment

Working in Korea as an expat can be tough. I have one colleague though whose situation is probably one of the toughest I've seen. He is a true professional though. For two years he put his hard hat on everyday, and tried to slog his way through the bullshit. He hoped - we all hope - that maybe things would start to change if he kept fighting the good fight working like a professional. And sometimes, rarely, we really do help. That is, after all, why they say they needed us when they hired us in the first place.

The other day though he asked me to lunch. I knew what was comming, but I asked if he'd mind if a mutual friend of ours joined. He said he would mind. Since I'm the overseas HR manager of a specific product division and he works in an unrelated corporate function our relationship has always been more casual than professional. But over the past half year or so I have become his unofficial HR rep. So I knew this was obviously going to be a working lunch.

Refreshingly lunch was a lot more positive than I had been anticipating. When many people decide to quit, they make up their mind months or years before they actually end up giving their notice. In the time leading up to 'the announcement' they often become caustically critical and bitter about everything. My colleague probably quit 9 to 12 months ago, but now he was finally ready to make it real.

After he told me he was ready to make his decision official we ended up using the rest of lunch talking about the timing of his notice, the proper channels to go through, how the severance and pension refunds would go - standard HR stuff. Ordinarily his function's HR would have handled this, but as they don't even have an ounce of professionalism, that was obviously out the question to begin with. And then he hit me with it. He wasn't angry. That feeling passed a while ago. No. "Now," he said, "I just feel shame and disappointment."

All I could do was nod.

There wasn't anything more I could do or say either. The only thing I know is that there is so very much more work to be done to ensure others don't end up feeling shame and disappointment. A high bar I know. Mostly I need to double down on influencing the right people so that spots open up for the right people to come in and effect broader changes (in terms of mindset, managerially, and procedurally). That's worth fighting for, at least for the time being.