jessica lee writes.

on getting hitched, and family.

so now... i am hitched. with an "i will" and an "i will" and a kiss to seal the deal, i am now hitched. and i have officially started my family.

getting hitched brings up all sorts of interesting things related to family though. especially when your family is a bit broken. for many, getting married is a family affair. which may be why for me, i never really envisioned a big wedding. i always thought... how could i have a traditional, large church wedding when my family is fractured? would i even want to invite any? and how many family members, if any, would i have sitting on my side of the aisle? inevitably, in my mind, the wedding party and guests for bride versus groom would be lopsided. few on my side, many on his. so eloping always seemed most ideal. 

and we came kinda close to that. a destination wedding. but not without drama. family drama. of course.

a few weeks removed though, i'm still pondering family. not necessarily when i will grow my own in the way everyone seems to ask about (and ask so soon about!) or expect for us to move toward the near term. i'm thinking about re-piecing bits of it.

like now that i've found my mother on twitter... could that be a sign? holy cow. my mother is on twitter.

So, It's Father's Day.

over lunch earlier, i commented to b., simply, "there are lots of families out together today."

everywhere i looked, it was dads and sons. entire families. there were lots of families out. it was just an observation. 

"on days like this, do you think about your dad?" he asked. 

and of course, the answer was yes.

absolutely, yes. it's been nine years since he passed - so the sharp pain of sadness on father's day has dulled some. but it still hits me every year. and it hit me pretty quickly this morning. 

i woke up today and did my typical weekend morning routine. b. always wakes up a little before me. so i took a moment to enjoy the bed all to myself. i rolled over to grab my phone and scanned the headlines. i scrolled through work emails. i scrolled through personal emails. and then i scrolled through facebook to see who was up and what everyone was up to this morning. update after update was about fathers day. i scrolled and scrolled, only stopping to "like" one comment, a friend whose status mentioned missing his pops who passed away three years ago.

yep. happy father's day.

i always think really fondly of my friends who also are without fathers today. like that particular friend. and others. i feel a particular closeness to them that they may not know about. but it's true. my heart breaks a little for them because i get it. i totally understand. it's too soon, much to early for me or others to have already lost of fathers. it shouldn't happen this early. it sucks. and i could have done the same, post something in memory of my own father. but really, on my wall today, i'll probably be silent.

not that i'm bitter. not that i'm really sad today. it's just that mostly, i think it's confusing for others. i don't want people to stumble across my wall post today and pause wondering... should they comment? should they like the post? or do they scroll past it and go on with celebrating their own father today? the appropriate response to death - whether recent or long since past - it's always a little confusing. 

and frankly, confusion is much of what i feel about my dad. he was my dad. he was the only father i knew. but was he perfect? far from it. was he a good man? i think so. but i also remember a whole lot of fighting related to what were seen as his downfalls. and now that i am old enough to have strong opinions on what i believe a man, husband, and father should be, it's particularly confusing because while i understand some of the fighting and probably would be just as infuriated if faced with a man like him today and in my present circumstances... i also understand how difficult it must have been for him, not to mention stifling. 

so it's confusing, and it's complex. which is exactly why i wonder what it would be like telling his other daughter about him.

"so, hey..." i might say to this other sister of mine. whom i've never met. but hope to some day. "hi. it's nice to meet you. can you believe we share the same dad.? i know... you never really got to meet him or know him. when you were a year or so old, he left. met my mom. i was born a bit later. and i spent the majority of my life with him. yeah... i know. i'm sorry about that. so what was he like? well..."

i play that conversation out in my head sometimes, not quite sure which direction it could go. will she be mad at me that i had him my entire life as a present father while she did not? i couldn't fault her if she were still angry. but will she want to know about him? and if yes, i always wonder how much to tell. do i tell her only the good? is it better to paint a picture for her - in his memory, for his sake - of a great man? or does that just rub it in? or do i tell her the good, the bad, and the ugly? do i just tell the truth?

for now, at least, the conversation remains make believe. in my head. so no decisions have to be made now about how i package and present him. but slowly, i'm growing muster to bring that reality and hopefully that conversation to life. 

Crickets. Crickets. Crickets.

okay. so it's been a while since i have written anything on this 'ole bloggy. a year and a half actually. and i've been asked why. (by my three fans who read it. hi, hi, hi, to each of you!)

long answer short - of late, i've not needed an outlet as much. i'm happy. over the moon happy. and life just suddenly seems so much less complicated. my mind is clear. i don't feel the need to over analyze which is what much of this blog felt like in the past. an issue would pop into my mind, i'd go into analysis mode, then spend a bit of time over analyzing, then falling into analysis paralysis, and then the issue would still sit unresolved but at least in the process of writing and over-analyzing, i was able to get tears out so it felt like something was resolved. it was cathartic at least. but that seems so unnecessary of late. (and no i'm not taking xanax.)

but i miss writing. of course there's fistful of talent and that's a lovely outlet for me professionally. but i still miss writing.

so i'm contemplating a return. and contemplating writing way, deep down from the bottom of my heart as i consider embarking on a new family related journey. not starting my own family, necessarily. but discovering and chronicling my own as i don't want to lose any of the memories.

so i might be back in this space.

maybe.

A Little Twitter Experiment: @koreankorean. Learn One Korean Word a Day.

it's been a while since i posted here, hasn't it? 

in all honesty, what we're about to talk about was just an experiment. it was an idea, born over a meal of korean food and the result of talk of wanting to bone up on our korean language skills (which admittedly stink.) but what an interesting little experiment this has become. the thought was to start a twitter feed dedicated to learning new vocabulary words - in korean. one word a day. we'd provide the world spelled in korean. a romanized pronunciation. + the definition. and here was the first tweet:

 

@koreankorean. and it's taken on a life of it's own.

firstly, of course, @korean was taken. as was @koreanvocab. none of the logical choices were available to me. so @koreankorean it was. and 319 tweets later, 77 days after we got started, we have 1,161 followers and the community continues to grow. daily, we receive anywhere from two to 10 questions via the @-reply feature, or via direct messages with the requests ranging from translations, to explanation of the the language and sentence structure to pronunciation. 

ultimately, what i've learned is that this is an exercise in community building, folks. find people who are interested in similar issues. build influence by sharing knowledge. and so now? we have relationships with over a thousand people who were complete strangers previously - brought together by shared interests. and because we've shared our knowledge, @koreankorean is looked to as a guide, a leader, a source of credible information... and i think there's a lesson in here for my HR and recruiting friends. think on it a bit though. let it stir in that brain of yours. and i'll come back to draw the parallels between @koreankorean and your recruiting efforts.

stay tuned.

I Think I Might Finally Understand Why Some People Might See Me As Jaded - I've Completely Lowered My Expectations.

very recently, i realized that somewhere along the line my expectations have lowered greatly. and i now understand why people think i'm jaded - already. it's kind of sad. 

i was given my first "managerial" responsibilities at the ripe old age of 22. 22! can you believe that? looking back now, it was a crazy move. i had six who reported to me - and i was clueless. it was your classic example of taking someone who was "technically" sound and a great subject matter expert, and then asking that person to then manage others who did that same work. and it works in some situations - but in many others, it doesn't. back to me though. my biggest struggle in managing people? they failed to meet my expectations, and often. it was my expectation that everyone would produce as much as i did. i expected that everyone would produce at the level of quality that i did. and i expected that everyone else should be just as committed as i was. 

i would bang my head against the wall wondering how to get that same level and same quality of output from others - and constantly lament my frustration to my own managers. "not everyone can be like you, jessica," i was told. which was a fine and dandy response... but i still wondered, do i lower my expectations? the answer then was no, that i shouldn't lower my expectations. rather, we worked on trying to find better ways to get people to where i expected them to be. and that - took a lot of effort. some would eventually get closer to meeting my expectations. but some would never meet my expectations at which point we had to decide whether to cut our losses.

keeping my expectations in place and getting others to rise to them, that was the right approach in that first gig i had as a people manager. but i'm just realizing right now that somewhere along the line, failed expectation after failed expectation has caused me to just lower or completely give up on having expectations - in the workplace, and with personal relationships too. because when you cut people a lot of slack, or when you have little to no expectations of people - it's impossible for them to fail you. and in those rare moments where they do show up and meet your non-existent expectations, you're blown away and left in awe of how great they are which of course is a way nicer feeling than not having your expectations met.

but when you get to the place i'm at - jaded is what i think we can call this - here's what happens. you possibly begin allowing people to not treat you well. you accept mediocrity. you are apathetic. you accept anything and anyone to come as they are because few, or maybe no one meets your expectations anyways. you believe people to be shitty, or dumb, or whatever it means to lack the goods to meet your expectations... and then potentially, you are left surrounded by people who suck. you don't expect any better, after all. you learn to be very accepting and forgiving and you figure out how to work around them. 

now this of course sounds incredibly jaded... maybe even bitter or angry. yes! i just might finally be pissed off about these low or non-existent expectations because that's the only appropriate response and feeling when you have your eyes opened to what someone meeting and exceeding your non-existent expectations. i've had my socks knocked off without my even expecting or demanding it. can you believe that? and now? i'm left wondering how and why i let my expectations fall in the first place.

I'm in Glamour Magazine, Folks! October 2009 Issue, Page 253.

well, i'd be a big fat liar if i said i didn't think it was a big deal to have landed on the pages of a national magazine. seriously. glamour magazine, folks. for real! page 253, the october 2009 issue, the focus being on pay transparency. you shouldn't have to guess what side of the issue i can down on...

the spread:

glamour asked:

should you tell coworkers how much you make? salary sharing sites like glassdoor.com make it easier to know what other people earn. (and if the new paycheck fairness act gets passed, your employer can't retaliate if you disclose what's on your pay stub.) should we be more open about our salaries? we put the question to the experts.

and the response from moi? 

no! making salaries public breeds resentment. let's say your coworker julie tells you her salary, and she's making $8,000 more than you - for doing the same job. your company may have valid reasons (maybe julie has more education), but you'll still resent it and then how could you work well together? no wonder 89 percent of workers say they don'tw ant to share their pay details, according to a british study. companies should give employees a salary range for specific jobs (that's only fair), but the exact number should be determined by negotiating skills. build the best case for why you should earn more based on your record. regardless of what others make, you have to ask for what you're worth.

a little bit about what went into this because it was an interesting, interesting process. first off, thanks to Ann Bares at the blog Compensation Force... i wouldn't have had this opportunity had she not referred them to me. but the chatter between the editor and i started back in december. december! this was 9 months in the making. they gave me the premise. i gave them my opinion. and we started with me writing something up that was about 300 words in length. 300 words written in my voice, saying kinda about the same thing as what eventually printed... but my voice isn't necessarily glamour's voice. about four rounds back-and-forth with their editors and varying versions of the piece, the 300 words i originally wrote was eventually whittled down to 122 words. 

the writing process was interesting. getting the voice right for glamour was tough but even harder? writing something that was still ra-ra for the ladies but still held true to my own beliefs. i mean... i didn't know what the "yes!" piece opposite mine would say but seeing it now, i'm reminded why this was challenging in the first place. basically, she throws in the fact that women still earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by a man as the basis of her argument for why we need pay transparency... and that kind of makes me look like the anti-woman asshole, you know? i'm arguing that we need to be better at negotiating and we should keep salaries private; who cares about gender equality! {sigh...} i still hold firmly with my viewpoint though. it's easy to pontificate and say everyone's salaries should be public... but it's just not practical in a real world setting.

so the piece was written. we came to agreement on the tone and content... but after not hearing from their editors for months, i assumed that they scrapped the piece and that it was just an exercise in dealing with big publishing houses... then came the call from the conde nast fact checker in august. spell your name. what's your title? who do you work for? confirm that you wrote this. and nine months later, the piece finally ran and i bought my copy of the magazine off the shelf of CVS!

and in case you were wondering, nope, i wasn't paid for it. don't think that i didn't ask either. you have to ask for what you're worth, remember? apparently, being in glamour magazine as a newbie like me should be payment enough... and i'd have to say... they were actually right.

have you picked up your copy of glamour magazine yet?!

The Jessica Lee Twitter Follow Starter Pack, for HR Pros.

i just got back from a gig at the 2009 HR Florida Conference & Expo where i was asked to partake in a panel discussion on HR and blogging. some highlights and food for thought from my pal Kris Dunn and me here and here. at a conference like this, what's typical is that the social media IQ is low (no offense! it's why we come out to talk though!) so we spend a lot of time coaxing and encouraging folks to simply jump in and get involved. it's asking people to dip their toes in the water, really. most are tentative, hesitant, and don't know where and how to start. and with twitter specifically, and getting started, i think there are two things to think about -

• are you using it for professional development and community building as a HR pro?
• or are you using it to develop a talent community from which to recruit?

either route is great - but i see them as two different reasons ways and reasons to tweet as an HR pro so i would encourage that people are deliberate in who they follow and what kinds of conversations they plan on having before they really jump in. i actually wish i had been more deliberate myself.

so for my pals jumping in and getting started, i thought i'd come up with my own version of the HR pro's starter pack of folks to follow on twitter to play off of @kris_dunn's question he put out asking who a VP of HR new to twitter should follow... so here you have it, in no particular order. and note, this is a starter pack. it's not meant to be comprehensive by any means. there are others who have attempted to create a directory, or a "best of" list. this is neither of those things.

this also isn't a list of the best brains in HR or recruiting. it's just my opinion of voices that matter on twitter for HR pros, and people whom i think can help make the twitter experience rich when you're first getting started. inevitably, i'll probably offend some of you for not including you. fine.  there are some really smart, great HR pros out there who i know are fantastic, but i just don't know if you represent that well via twitter. yep, you heard me. so if you agree or disagree with the "jessica lee starter pack," just hit the comments...  i'm happy to entertain your opinions.

@BobCorlett bob comes from the staffing agency world but provides great information about business, HR and recruiting in general, and links to relevant business issues that should matter to your everyday HR pro.

@Eric_B_Meyer i hate employment law, but i like eric for his updates on employment law generally, court decisions, legislative developments, etc.

@johnhollon as editor of Workforce Management, john gets our industry very well. besides that? he's a lovable, crotchety personality in our space who i almost always agree with. like many of the others i include on this list, john helps me draw relevance from stuff going on in the business world to my world as an HR pro.

@sharlyn_lauby former HR practitioner turned HR consultant... all around good person who i have tons of respect for because she's smart, she is nice, she is practical, and she's accessible. she's also a great SHRM champion... and i don't even love SHRM.

@kris_dunn the one and only HR Capitalist... kris dunn. need i say more? my pal, my mentor, my blogging boss, my bro, you gotta follow kris. he may not tweet thaaat often, but he's just good people to know.

@jessica_lee how can i not include myself? just follow, because i said so.

@SourcerKelly part of the FOT crew, kelly is a social media recruiting pro who gets the sourcing side of recruiting better than anyone else. she's a former HR pro/corporate recruiter/sourcer turned technical writer, sourcing consultant for AIRS. besides being a boolean queen, she's also an all around champion of all things social media.

@annbares the niche pro, ann covers the world of compensation like none other. she stays true to her niche too which i appreciate. she always keeps it pure and is my go-to voice in the comp space.

@incentintel another niche pro, and yep, another member of the FOT crew, paul has you covered with incentives and rewards. want to know how to motivate employees? what's going to influence your workforce? paul has the answer. 

@SodexoCareers for a glimpse into an organization who's doing a great job using twitter to recruit and evangelize their employment brand, you have to follow kerry noone who is behind @SodexoCareers. first class, world class... this is who you want to learn from and emulate.

@jenbenz employee benefits, healthcare, employee wellness... jen has got you covered and she does it in a non-technical, non-wonky kind of way.

@lisarosendahl the cheerleader. the enthusiast. the beam of positive energy that even cynical, jaded me really likes... it's hard to stay positive as an HR pro. i'll admit it. you get a lot of crap thrown your way, you may end up having to clean up a lot of messes... but lisa always manages to keep it positive.

@TheRecruiterGuy when it comes to recruiters on twitter, chris hoyt really is the recruiter to follow. he's innovated AT&T's interactive recruiting efforts and is a true pioneer and explorer of all things social media.

@williamtincup william... where to start with william. i like william for his "OPT" tweets - other people's thoughts. he links to good, solid, smart writing by others in the HR space. he's also the most progressive "HR marketer" i've ever seen. calling him an "HR marketer" just seems dumb though because he's totally something else.

@ChrisFerdinandi an up and comer in the HR world, chris is a good example of a NextGen HR pro, in my book at least, who we should be watching closely...

@MikeVanDervort i like mike. mike as an HR and labor relations pro? he's deep. he's legit. he's the real deal. and he's nice. on twitter, he's prolific. i've cut him off before because he does tweet a lot - seriously! but i've since re-followed him because it's good stuff. really.

@johnsumser want to know who has influence in the recruiting and HR space? john does. and he's also been writing about it too. on twitter though, i find that john provides great links to blog postings and news articles that make you think, connect dots, and re-examine yourself and your processes.

@SHRMcoo the consummate champion for SHRM, china is a cheerleader for SHRM which i of course, love to hate but can't help but to love because of china specifically. what an effective brand ambassador for SHRM.

and stil, there are more... but when you're just getting started, you've gotta start somewhere, and i want you to learn from the best. so follow, follow, and follow and i'll see you online.