Not the formal conference arrangement, not the desk and visitor chair setup, but two chairs positioned at an angle to each other. The arrangement of a conversation rather than a meeting. He sat. She sat. For a moment, neither of them spoke, and the silence was different from the silences they'd shared in the conference room.
Those had been tactical silences, pauses in which both parties were calculating. This one was something else. This one had the quality of two people who have been circling something important for a long time and have finally arrived at the place where they either look at it directly or walk away. Neither of them walked away. "I read the full report," Victoria said.
"So did I," Caleb said all 214 pages. Yes. She looked at her hands for a moment, then back at him. There's a section on page 112, she said. About the language patterns in performance evaluations.
I know the section. I wrote some of those evaluations, she said. Not all of them, but some. Senior level reviews that came through my office directly. She paused.
I used that language. Presence, energy, fit. I used it without I used it without understanding what I was actually saying with it. Caleb watched her. I want you to understand something, she continued.
I'm not telling you this because the board meeting is in 2 hours and I'm trying to get ahead of it. I'm telling you because I spent three nights this week reading my own words on those pages and I have not been able to sleep properly since. She stopped. I believed I was a fair person. I believed I rewarded the best people.
I believed, and this is the part that is the hardest to sit with. I believed that the system I was running was the most meritocratic environment I knew how to build. She said it with the particular exhaustion of someone who has examined a belief and found it hollow at the center. And now, Caleb asked, "And now I understand that I was confusing familiarity with merit," she said. The same way you told me in that first meeting.
I heard you say it and I understood it intellectually. She paused. It's different understanding something in a conference room and then seeing your own name in a 200page document that proves it. Caleb leaned forward slightly. Victoria, he said, I need to ask you something directly and I need you to answer me the same way.