I Almost Missed It

The meeting had barely started and he was already talking over someone.

I had worked with him for three years. Long enough that I could run a meeting with him in my head before it started. He would let you get four words in, then finish your sentence with his version of it. The good ideas in the room had a way of leaving with his name on them.

I had watched him do it to me. More than once.

Some days, we went at it. Other days, I had no desire or energy for the fight. I learned to choose my battles, which sounds mature until you realize sometimes it was just exhaustion with better branding.

So by the time we ended up in that room, I already had my walls up.

The larger team meeting had gone badly. We needed our functions aligned for an upcoming project, and whatever happened in the first discussion had left more tension than clarity. Now it was just the two of us, sent back into a smaller room to close the loop.

Neither of us came in neutral.

He was already on edge. So was I. We both walked into the room carrying the last meeting with us. For the first twenty minutes, we did exactly what I expected us to do. We repeated our points and defended our positions. We made the same argument with slightly different words.

Then he made an offhand comment.

I almost let it slide right past me.

I remember what I thought at that moment. Something like, easy for you to say. You are the reason we are in this predicament in the first place.

I didn’t write it down. I didn’t call it wisdom. I filed it under him, and everything filed under him usually got thrown out.

That was the habit I did not see at the time.

I almost missed the message because I disliked the messenger. Same sentence from someone I admired and I would have written it on a sticky note and put it on my monitor. From him, I treated it like background noise.

But the line did not leave.

Weeks later, I was in a heated conversation with someone else. Nobody was budging and I heard it again. We don’t have to agree to move forward. We just have to understand each other.

So I tried it.

I stopped pushing for agreement so quickly. I stopped treating understanding like a consolation prize. I started listening for what the person across from me needed me to understand before they could move.

It worked with clients. It worked with colleagues. It worked with my kids.

Both were true. I had not been willing to accept it at the time.

The part that stung came later.

This was not one meeting. It was a habit. For years, I let the messenger decide whether I would listen to the message. If somebody rubbed me the wrong way, I gave myself permission to stop hearing them. I called it having good judgment about people.

Sometimes it was. 

Sometimes it was an excuse to stop listening.

I have been reading Stoicism lately and Seneca had a line for this. He was getting pushback for quoting a rival school when he wrote, “Whatever is true is my property.”

Any good or useful idea belongs to whoever can recognize its merit. That is the point. Truth does not become less true because it comes from someone you would not invite to lunch.

I had been doing the opposite.

I was sorting by the speaker. I was throwing out the true thing because of who said it.

I will never know the full bill for that.

The advice I missed. The warnings that turned out to be right. The person who saw something in me but could not get me to hear it because I had already decided who they were to me.

I almost lost one of the best things he ever gave me because I could not get past the person who gave it.

The wisdom you need does not always arrive wrapped the way you like. Sometimes it comes from the person who steamrolls the meeting. The person who takes too much space. The name on the calendar that makes you brace before the call starts.

That does not mean everything they say is true. It does not mean they are safe. It does not mean you owe them access to you.

It means you are mature enough to separate the message from the messenger.

That is harder than it sounds.

Dismissing people feels clean. Listening is messier. You have to hold more than one truth at a time. You can dislike someone and still admit there may be something useful in what they said.

I keep thinking about how much I have thrown out that way.

Then I think about what might be sitting in front of me right now. Useful information in a hand I already decided not to take.

Whatever is true is yours.

Even when you cannot stand who is holding it.

Until next Tuesday.
Ceaneh