I pointed to that chair more than twenty years ago, and I still think about it. Not the gesture, which was blunter than I'd usually recommend, but the years of silence that came before it. I had been doing the job and assumed that was the same as asking for it. It wasn't.
The uncomfortable truth I had to sit with: the decision didn't go the wrong way because the system was unfair. It went that way because I never gave the person making it the one piece of information that mattered. My steadiness had quietly answered a question I was never actually asked.
If you've ever assumed your work was speaking for you, I'd genuinely like to hear it: have you told the person who shapes your trajectory what you actually want? Or are you still assuming it's obvious?
I pointed to that chair more than twenty years ago, and I still think about it. Not the gesture, which was blunter than I'd usually recommend, but the years of silence that came before it. I had been doing the job and assumed that was the same as asking for it. It wasn't.
The uncomfortable truth I had to sit with: the decision didn't go the wrong way because the system was unfair. It went that way because I never gave the person making it the one piece of information that mattered. My steadiness had quietly answered a question I was never actually asked.
If you've ever assumed your work was speaking for you, I'd genuinely like to hear it: have you told the person who shapes your trajectory what you actually want? Or are you still assuming it's obvious?