Shhhhh...

Have you ever heard this joke?

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Interrupting cow."

"Interrupting cow wh..." "MOO"

That was the board meeting this morning.

J's official title is "Registrar and Administrative Assistant." She does MUCH more than that. With just two of us, she wears a lot of hats and takes on many projects that are outside her job description. She should have a better title, make more money and have more of a leadership role. She is qualified for it and works hard. However, she is a part time employee and comes to the board meetings to take notes. But she really likes to speak up and she doesn't just give her opinion, but interrupts board members as they speak. After about the 5th time today, I started counting how many times she did it. I stopped counting when I hit 15. That was the point that I crawled under the table, refused to come out and pretended everyone was invisible. Okay, not exactly, but that's what I was doing in my head.

The Board President has told me at least 3 times that she needs to be quiet at meetings. I have tried to talk to her, but I don't know a nice way to say, "you know how you are my right hand and do more than I even know and I couldn't survive without you and you are invaluable to this organization? Yeah, um, you aren't actually important enough to be able to talk, so could you sit quietly from now on?" Perhaps if she wasn't twice my age, if I had more leadership experience, if I was less awkward, if I cared about her feelings less or could find the right phrasing, I could have that conversation. But so far, I've just sort of talked around it and hoped things would be better on their own. I think it's actually getting worse.

I agree with the Board President, but I also know that her being invested in and committed to her job is in my best (ad camp's best) interest. I don't know how to have the conversation without completely degrading and demoralizing her. The last Executive Director was a horrible, awful man, who liked to remind her she was worthless and not important and just a part time secretary. I am sure there is a middle ground between the way he treated her and leading her in a positive way to not cut people off, but so far I haven't figured it out.

It was the last meeting until September, so maybe I'll ignore it a while longer. I really hate stuff like this.