Two observations

First, how a person reacts to a difficult situations says a lot about their character.  Some people hide and avoid the situation completely.  Others plug along pretending they know what their doing (and often creating a big mess).  And yet others confront the situation so they can get all the facts, adapt, and focus on reaching the bar.  I hope that with each difficult challenge, I become a little bit more like the last person.


On another note, I won't say I am not guilty of this but I have tried to be more conscious of it in the recent years.  Absolutely no good comes from gossiping about faults of former or current co-workers.  I don't want to hear how awful my former colleagues were - I actually liked them.  I also don't want to hear about the faults of my current colleagues (unless they are my employees) - these are people I need to work with.  

The IRS does not care what you put in your MSA

Contrary to what many people think, from a reliable source (an IRS Revenue Agent), I can assure you that the IRS will not spend time reading nor following the terms of a Marital Settlement Agreement or other family court order.

They don't care if the husband is solely responsible for the back taxes; if they can't collect from the husband, they will go after they wife.  They don't care if the mother is supposed to be able to claim the child as a dependent; if dad claims the child too, they will look at who provided more for the child (had the child in their care more of the time, spent more money on the care of the child, etc.).

For this reason, it is absolutely critical that you include language in the MSA that can be enforced by the Court should the IRS or state Department of Revenue (or any third party) try to collect from the other party.  Some options I have seen include a hold open on maintenance for the purpose of enforcing the obligations of either party or the ability to ask the Court for an increase (or decrease in the case of the payee failing to meet his or her obligations) in maintenance to cover same.

Figuring out what your employees need

People in general are not very good at articulating what they need.  In a employee-supervisor relationship, that gets more difficult as no one wants to appear weak or inadequate in the presence of the someone judging their job performance.  So as someone new to supervising employees, I'm learning to pay attention to the cues my employees give me to attempt to figure out what they need and find a way to give it to them if possible.

If I were you, ....

I recently listened to a webinar recorded in July 2013 titled "People Management 101:  Providing Direction & Support" presented by Ann Phillips, Senior Consulting Partner at The Ken Blanchard Companies

One, of many things, I took from the presentation was the use, or preferably non-use, of the phrase, "if I were you, I would..."  This phrases loses sight of the very important fact that I'm NOT you.  We are all different and would respond differently to any situation.