A Gut Feeling

Every Monday, Stephen comes in for his work experience placement and mentoring sessions with me, yesterday was his second day. At the end of last week when I was planning Stephen’s day I realised that I had a very important meeting on Monday afternoon. At this point I began to wonder what the solution would be, I had three options:

a) To change Stephen’s day and have him come in on another day of the week.
b) To take him with me to the meeting or
c) To task him with other projects whilst I was at the meeting.

My gut feeling told me that I should be picking option b and to take him with me to the meeting but that’s not what I done. I chose option c and left him at the office with some tasks to complete, they were important tasks which all had a meaning but nevertheless I still felt that Stephen should have been coming with me.

During the meeting, which was with one of the biggest employability prime contractors in the UK, I had a niggling feeling throughout. So, I stopped the meeting and explained my predicament to the National Development Director and the Business Development Manager for Scotland, they were amazed by the story and they said that he would have been more than welcome to attend.

Then they did something that was quiet amazing and invited Stephen to do some work experience within their business and namely shadowing the National Development Director.

The reason I didn’t ask Stephen along was because I was concerned about how it would look and whether this was the right environment for him – this is a lesson learned for me and never again will I go against my intuition. I have made some serious business decisions based only on the fact that I had a good feeling around it and my intuition told me that it was the right way to go.

This situation has turned out for the best but had I not stood up in the meeting and put forward my thoughts this would have been a missed opportunity for Stephen.
 

2 Comments

Posted by katie on 14 December 2010

A good reminder in following your own instincts, and not going with a course of action because you feel you should and that it will suit other people better! This will be a great experience for Stephen too! K

Posted by Stephen McDonald on 14 December 2010

Stevie , what a brilliant opportunity it is getting to go on a journey with you and ive read the article and I''ve thouroughly enjoyed every minute of working with KDS group and despite it only being week 2 , this sounds like an amazing opportunity! It has been a pleasure working with you and I want to say a massive thank you for what you done at that meeting yesterday!

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