The CFO who ate lunch alone taught me more than any mentor

At my old job in Cleveland, I noticed our CFO, Diane, always sat by herself in the break room. One day I asked why she never networked during lunch. She said, 'I need 20 minutes where I'm not performing, otherwise I bring work home with me.' That conversation in 2019 made me realize boundaries are a skill, not a weakness. Have any of you learned more from watching someone's habits than from their actual advice?

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wyatt1351mo ago

Oh wow Claire, you're right. Diane totally missed out on the fine art of eating cold pasta while nodding along to someone's story about their kid's soccer game. That's where the real power moves happen. Meanwhile she was probably too busy being a competent CFO to learn which middle manager hates which other middle manager over a shared bag of chips. Sounds like a tragedy. I bet her career really suffered from not hearing Dave in accounting complain about the printer for the fifteenth time. Some of us just aren't cut out for that kind of high stakes networking.

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claire_grant341mo ago

Diane probably missed a dozen chances to learn real office politics sitting alone like that.

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