Our meeting was over and he was leaving. He stopped in the doorway, slowly turned around and looked at me. I waited. I could see that whatever he was going to say was hard for him. Long pause. He said, “You know we like you, don’t you?”
His face was solid as a rock, no expression. Affinity blazed in his Irish eyes.
The hard driving, never smiling, always serious, never joking, global vice president was looking at me with love. The cold little corporate conference room filled with light and warmth.
I said, very quietly, “I know, Dónal. I like you too.” My heart was bursting with love.
He gave a quick nod, turned on his heel, and was gone, and the door slowly closed behind him.
It’s good that I was alone in the room, because the moment the door closed, five years of love burst open and released tears of happiness that gently flowed down my face.
Then I got up and floated out of the room, walking on air, my feet not touching the floor for the rest of that day.
I had been working with him and his leadership team for five powerful years, implementing programs in over 20 countries.
I had sat in countless meetings with this man, listening to his demands, critical reviews, unrelenting drive. Not one smile.
Never mind. I adored him. He brought out the best in me. He brought out the best in everyone. Unrelenting demands, tight deadlines, constant stress, and we all did our best work. We were all thriving, happy. Much laughter between the team as we worked together. I loved working with a real leader.
And I loved this man. Deeply. Not romantically, of course. As a leader. As a human being. As someone who challenged me to do my very best work and then gave me the total freedom to do it. A leader who let me lead. His intelligence, his ability to think strategically, everything about his mind was lightning sharp. I found it delightful. I was having fun staying two steps ahead of him. I don’t usually meet people this smart and I loved surprising him.
I was the only consultant he would ever hire. He renewed my contract year after year, never negotiated me on price. I knew that’s all he would ever tell me about how he felt about my work. I never asked.
This moment, him standing in the doorway, released all the love for him that I felt. I was swept away by powerful gratitude. Grateful for him. For his creating a world of opportunity, for creating a real team, for all we had shared, for all we had created, for the thousands of lives we had changed, for the impossible we dared and achieved. For working together.
I believed in him. He believed in me. We knew it. We had no limits.
After that day, I knew that he would never again mention how much he liked me, and that he would be horrified if I ever brought it up, so I never did. We continued to work together until he retired and went on to become a Director of many company boards. He still writes me from time to time.
There’s a love that happens at work that’s not a romantic love. It comes from sharing and working together to achieve a deeply-felt, and deeply personal, purpose. It comes from pure appreciation. It comes from real admiration. It comes from the joy of creating something incredible with someone or someones. Perhaps you are thinking of someone in your life that you feel this for as you read this. Then you know - it’s powerful and deep.
Large corporations give us an extremely limited vocabulary for expressing this deep love. And great restrictions on how we communicate it.
But they can’t restrict our feeling it, and that’s the important part.
That brings me to this message I have for you: Happy Valentine’s Day! The one day of the year we celebrate the most wonderful and powerful of human emotions – love in all its splendid manifestations. May you have many people that you feel love for, and many glorious ways love manifests its beauty in your life.
I am fortunate to have many. And the ones in my past still blaze like a fire in my heart. Always will. I love you all with a deep passion human words can’t contain. The ones in my life today I tell every chance I get.
Somehow standing in that doorway, Dónal was overcome by the depth of love we felt for each other. A love born of deeply felt gratitude, appreciation, admiration and the joy of creating shoulder-to-shoulder.
Some things are eternal, and that kind of love is one of them.
Letting myself have feelings is one of the best things I have ever done for myself. Letting myself feel how much I love people, and letting myself love fully. It happened when I learned about Causative Communication. I don’t try to love people. I simply let myself love them, and I find it all comes naturally, and I don’t hold back what I am feeling. Ever.
Even so, I would have never said anything to Dónal, not after 5 years, not after 50. I knew that saying it would have made him want to run out of the room.
It meant the world to me, however, when Dónal stood in that doorway and, in one of the most awkward moments of his life, told me. It meant more to me than every dollar he had ever paid me.
Coaching people, I see how much people hold themselves back. Let me suggest to you that when it comes to affinity, don’t do it. Don’t hold yourself back.
As Kahlil Gibran, the wonderful Lebanese poet, wrote:
When you don’t allow yourself to love, you pass
“into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears.”
Laugh all of your laughter, weep all of your tears, and love all of your love.
Express it best you can to those you feel it for.
Touching another human’s heart is never done in vain.
Happy Valentine’s Day, my friend!
Be the cause!