Reading for Mommy

Not long ago, not sure what triggered it, our big boss bought a book for all the people managers. We were supposed to discuss about the book in the sub-groups he set up and then have further discussion at the leadership meeting. The book was called QBQ – The Question Behind the Question (What to really ask yourself to eliminate blame, complaining and procrastination).

This was back in October and I was busy working on a critical project under a very tight timeline so I didn't read the book and skipped both meetings.  I then went back to China for three weeks to visit my family and came back only to find out that the deadline to complete the year end review was moved up. Also, we were supposed to have another round of discussion about the QBQ book with different groups of people, this time at the whole department level. The day before my group discussion was due, I still hadn't read the book and had to work on the year end review that night because it was due the next day.

I talked about this at the dinner that night and Olivia was curious about what this book was about. By glancing through, I noticed that the words of the book were not that difficult and each chapter had a story to illustrate a point. Even though I didn't think the topics would be that interesting to a 10-year old, I still said to Olivia: "Why don't you read it if you are interested in what it's about." Olivia said" "Sure, I will give it a try."

I could not believe she actually sat next to me and read the whole book while I was working in about an hour and a half.

"So how is the book?" I asked.

"It is good." She answered. "Some stories are pretty interesting to read."

She then summarized: "Mom, I know you are busy. If you don't have enough time to read the whole book, just read Chapter x on page y, Chapter…" she went through the pages and gave me a list of 6 chapters.

"Why just these chapters?" I asked.

"Because they stand out." she answered. Wow, I was impressed!

After a little while, she "confessed" to me: "Well, mom, you know I am not a manager, I am not an employee or parent either and I am not even a teenager, so there some stuff in that book I can not really relate."

Haha…that's okay, sweetie. Just the fact that you actually had the interest to finish reading this book already impressed me. Let alone you summarized the chapters you thought were well written. Good job! J