This Week

This past week was a bit interesting. I think I learned about both leadership in the workplace and about legislation.
In regards to legislation, I started working through the Health Care bill. Basically I went through the 564 amendments and the bill to find any reference to disability, blind and vision. That was interesting because it was in very few cases that any of these words were mentioned and any time it was there was a frequent association with aging. This was frustrating because so little of the bill or amendments were actually focused on disabled people at all when millions of people are in that demographic.
About leadership in the workforce, there were a lot of changes going on because next week there will be one person leaving the office and two starting. The person leaving is a bit older and except for myself the only sighted person in the office. What we had to do was maneuver furniture and switch two whole offices. The Director, basically tried to help but the woman leaving was very insistent on what to do. He seemed to just let it go rather than trying to finesse it. Although they had a few conversations that could have been constructive, it ended up not working out at all and she simply seemed insistent and overwhelmed. I feel like they both could have handled this situation better. The Director is a very good policy advocate but seems not to be very focused on managerial aspects.
One wonderful thing I experienced was how both he and the VP are so people oriented. They both talk to me a lot and not just about policy. They genuinely seem to want to get to know me and that creates a very open and great environment. The VP, even while he was out, called to talk to me to ask me to call a couple people in other offices so that I could better get visual adaptations. That kind of personal attention changes things a lot and is a very strong individual, indirect organizational tool in leading an organization.