Who Saw You?
My dad pushed me into the deep end when I was six. He saw something I couldn't.
When I was six years old, I was a strong swimmer: in the shallow end only. At least that's how I saw it. Until my dad pushed me into the deep end.
I'd dive for toys in the shallow end all day, then freeze at the line where the depth increased to five feet. The way I saw it, I could not swim past that line.
However, my dad saw it differently. We were standing at the edge of the deep end discussing whose turn it was to vacuum the pool, and suddenly he gave me a gentle shove right into the pool at the 8-foot line.
You can argue about whether that was good parenting. I've wondered that myself.
But I hit the water, swam in the deep end, and then climbed out.
My dad saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. I was stronger and more capable than I thought.
From that moment on, I was a strong swimmer in both the shallow and the deep end, and much more.
That moment is branded in my memory. It took me decades and a career as an organizational psychologist and executive coach to name what happened at that pool. Someone saw me, and it changed what I believed I was capable of.
I've watched stories like this happen in coaching conversations ever since. Someone hears one sentence from another who's been paying attention, and their whole sense of what is possible shifts.
Frequently, the person who said the sentence has no idea of the impact it has.
That's what I'm writing about here.
For the past year I've been interviewing people about the moment someone saw them. A teacher who wouldn't let a student quit a speaking class. A woman told by a friend that she was worth more than her current salary. A person who stood in a long line at the post office and noticed what the postal workers needed rather than getting frustrated. A stranger. A father. People who run organizations and people who don't have official titles.
The stories have a similar arc. Someone paid attention, said what they noticed out loud, and the other person's life shifted positively. Then that person went and did it for someone else. That's the cascade. It is a form of leadership.
I'm capturing these stories for a book, and because we need to keep the cascade going. But books take a long time, and the stories shouldn't wait, so I'll publish them here as I go.
We are more connected than any humans in history and lonelier for it. Much of what passes between us is negative judgment, and it doesn't have to be that way.
And a lot of people I talk with want to do something about the state of the world but feel that whatever they could do is simply too small. I don't believe that. Seeing another person for something good in them and telling them is an act of leadership available to every one of us, at any moment, at no cost. It just doesn't look like the typical definitions of leadership, so we don't count it. I'd like it to be the headline instead of the sidebar.
Here is the invitation:
Perhaps somebody saw you. Maybe it was thirty years ago, and you still think about it. Maybe it was a sentence someone tossed off that they'd be astonished to learn mattered. Or maybe you were the one who said it, and you found out years later what it did.
Tell me. Leave a comment. I read everything, and I'd love to talk with you. These stories are the book, but more than that, they make a difference.
My dad told me toward the end of his life that I should write a book. He had a habit of seeing things in me before I could. I'm finally getting to it.
Lori
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