“Hey, thanks for making time to meet me this morning! How have you been?”
He was a larger-than-life man, bounding across the coffee shop to join me. We had met at a mid-sized technology company where I was working with someone a few levels below his position running all of Product and Engineering. He sat down still talking, loudly, “… and you know I have been firing up my network to start looking for my next opportunity …”
And in a very non-coach voice, I said, “Wait. Have you processed that you were just fired?”
You have watched a leader do that. You may have been him. And there is a quieter version that happens at your own desk, most weeks: the news lands, and inside 10 minutes you have the answer, and it is a good answer, and it is already moving. If you have learned to distrust how fast that arrives, this one is for you.
The large tear that formed in his eye told me everything. Leaving a business is never easy, particularly when it may or may not be your idea, and like most business people he had been taught to never let them see you sweat, much less cry. My 1 sentence burst that bubble, and the sudden stillness scared us both. Knowing that silence is the best tool a coach can deploy, I held still and started to count to 100 in my head. As I got close to 50, he finally said, “How do you know?”
The answer was simple, and equally painful: “I was fired once.”
What is still Alive under the noise…
I have told the rest of that story more times than any other, always privately, always to someone who had just been shown a door. It goes like this. He asked what I thought he should do, and I realized in the moment that I needed something to suggest. From somewhere came this: “You need to write your boss a letter. The nastiest, most brutal words you can come up with. Raging, emotional, profane if you need it. Then delete it. Do it again. Keep doing it until you get all of that out of you.” After a moment I added the part that matters: “… if you don’t, it will show up when you least want it to. Probably in an interview, when you can least afford it.”
He left walking slower, and in many ways more determined. I did not think about it again until a voicemail 3 weeks later: “I really appreciated your insights and just wanted you to know that I mailed it today.”
My heart went into my throat. I called him back, doing my best to be calm. “So … how are you?”
“Never better! I wrote as you said, and eventually I got to the point where I started to realize my part in what had happened. And then I got to where I really needed to be.”
“… and what did you actually write?”
“Oh, that was easy. I thanked him for all the things he had given me the opportunity to do, for what he had taught me, and how I wished him nothing but the best.”
I stammered out the only question I had left: “… and what do you expect to get back?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? I said what I wanted to say, and now I can move on.” And he did.
…before you write the thing you cannot take back
The first time I wrote that story down, the song underneath it was an old 1960s single called “The Letter,” written in Nashville and handed to a band of teenagers who did not have a name yet. This week the band is Pearl Jam, and I am keeping their part short on purpose, because the story above does not need help. But there is 1 song of theirs I could not leave out of a post about stepping back.
In 2009, Eddie Vedder took a single chord from “Tuolumne,” an instrumental he had written for the film Into the Wild, and built a quiet song around it. He wanted the chorus to be the bridge; the producer, Brendan O’Brien, talked him out of it. The song was called “Just Breathe.” It spent 13 weeks at number 1 on the adult alternative chart, and Willie Nelson, of all people, recorded it 3 years later. For a band that made its name on a singer hanging from the lighting rig, it is a strange and lovely thing: a song whose whole instruction is in the title.
That is the observe practice this week, and it is the one I hand leaders in my own words: breathe. Step back and do not get sucked in. Get some distance from the situation so you are not triggered. Really see before you decide anything.
If there is an obvious answer, it is a trap.
What are you filing under the wrong label?
The obvious answer, for the man in the coffee shop, was the network. Fire it up, get moving, never let them see you sweat. It was obvious, it was fast, and it would have carried the anger straight into his next interview. The letter was the step back. 3 weeks of writing the worst version, deleting it, writing it again, until the thing he was observing changed from what they did to him to his part in it. Then, and only then, the real letter. The one he could send.
Here is what I have noticed in nearly 20 years of handing that exercise to leaders: the first draft is never about the other person. It is about the writer. The anger is real, and it is also a label, applied fast, that has been quietly sorting everything since. The letter does not argue with the label. It wears it out. By the 3rd draft, the writer is looking at the situation instead of the folder he built for it. It does not have to be about a boss. It can be about the reorg, the board, the person who got the job you wanted. Write the worst version. Delete it. Write it again. Watch what you are observing change.
That is the leadership version of Just Breathe, and it is how I stay Alive in the work now, almost 20 years after that coffee. The story I tell about being fired is on Saturday, with the band’s guitar player, who has his own version. Today is about the page.
There is an email in your drafts folder. You wrote it at 11 last night, you did not send it, and you have opened it twice today. You are telling yourself you are being careful. You are half right.
So … what is the 1 letter you need to write this week, and not send?
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: pick the 1 situation you have already named this quarter. Write the letter you would never send about it. Delete it. Write it again tomorrow. On day 3, write down what changed in what you see.
Sitting with a leader while the label wears out is most of the work I do. We can do that together… Schedule that here.
He mailed a thank-you note to the man who fired him, and walked into his next chapter without the anger in his pocket. That is what stepping back buys you. Before the obvious answer, before the network, before the next thing … Just Breathe.
