Nobody Ever Asked Me How I Was Doing

Twenty-five years in, and I cannot remember anybody asking me how I was doing.

People ask all the time, of course. In corridors, at the start of calls, walking into meetings. Nobody means it and I never answer it, and everybody knows that is how it works.

There were reviews and skip levels and a process for most things. None of those are the same question. A review is about what you delivered. A skip level is about the business.

I do not hold it against anyone. It was not in anybody’s job description. My bosses were mostly decent people with their own quarter to worry about, and nobody above them was being asked either. There is simply no room for it in the way these places are built.

People did come to me over the years, and I listened, and some of them still remember it. But I do not think I was ever the one who asked first. You do not think to offer something nobody has offered you.

The strange part is how long it took me to notice. Most of a career, before it occurred to me that it had never once happened.

That is what Candid Offload is. Somebody whose only job for that hour is to ask, and then listen to the answer without needing to do anything about it.

It is not much to want. To be asked once, by somebody who means it.