No Conversation Too Difficult
No, really.
This week in a meeting, I tried to sum up in a single sentence what I think makes me uniquely powerful at work. I spoke about my need to walk towards the hard stuff, to say the thing that needs to be said, my unshakeable belief that no conversation is too difficult - even if that is how it feels, or even if the personal risks of speaking up are high.
Don’t get me wrong, I quite often f*ck this up. Sometimes my observations or feedback are clumsy, or poorly timed, or reflective only of my perspective and not the comprehensive reality of a situation. On occasion, the consequences of speaking up are very hard or unexpected, or both.
This got me thinking about where my behaviour comes from and what drives it. Like most things, I imagine it’s complicated and multi-faceted. But I think at least in part it comes from some of the non-work experiences that have shaped me and made me who I am.
WARNING. Some might consider the rest of this post to be hugely over-sharing, and it does contain references to cancer and to death, so if you need or want to, please feel free to stop reading right here.
If you’re still with me. In 2018, I sat in a hospice at the bedside of my youngest brother Tom as he died of cancer. The photo above is me holding his hand the day before he died. He was no longer conscious, but I like to think that he could still hear and feel me and our family close by as we pottered about doing our best, and as he prepared to leave.
In the years and months before he died, I had, with Tom, some of the most difficult and heart-breaking conversations I have ever had or will ever have with another human being.
How to face the reality of a terminal diagnosis. How to live when you know you will shortly die. How to prepare your wife, your young children, your family and friends, for what will come. How to live with increasingly unmanageable pain, suffering and increasing infirmity. How to listen to things you don’t want to hear. How to walk alongside someone dealing with all of this, as an imperfect human being who is just doing their best.
At one point it was so hard I couldn’t even speak or hear it, so I wrote him a letter that he was able to read before he died.
I wouldn’t wish this experience on my worst enemy, believe me. But I guess because of it, I was able to access my superpower. Since then, nothing I ever have to do or say or deal with at work ever frightens me in the slightest. Because nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever be as difficult to speak or to hear, as my conversations with him. This is not to say that work isn’t important or meaningful, because it absolutely is. But it is to say that, for me, no conversation is ever too difficult. That’s the gift that his life, and death, have given me. And it is a gift that I try to honour every single day in his memory. Even when I duff it up, I’m trying to do the right thing.
Love you little bro x
If you’d like to read a truly excellent book about life, and death, I highly recommend this. It’s not an easy read, but it is well worth it - beautiful, life affirming stuff - because if you can face this, you can face anything.
