For an Hour, Nobody Is Handling You

At some point, people stopped telling me things.

Not lying. Just the version arriving a little cleaner than the truth. A problem brought to me after it had already been handled. A disagreement settled in the corridor before anyone walked into the room.

I did not notice it happening. You get used to meetings where everybody agrees, and it takes years to work out that the real conversation happened somewhere else and you were not in it.

It runs in every direction. Most people decide what the person above them needs to hear, and soften the edges on the way. I spent a career having to read a room before saying a difficult thing, so I understand the instinct. But you can choose your moment without changing the message. Not everybody does, and a lot gets lost on the way up.

By the time somebody is senior enough to make the decisions that matter, they have the least reliable information in the building. Everybody is managing them. Including the people who like them.

That does something to you after a while. You stop being able to tell whether anything you are hearing is the real version. Including about yourself.

I think that is part of why these conversations work. Nobody is positioning anything. Nothing you say has to be managed on the way out, and nobody needs a particular outcome from you.

For an hour, nobody is handling you.