All right. What do you want? He asked. Not what you think the board wants, not what you think is the strategically optimal answer. What do you actually want for yourself, for the people in this building, for what happens next?
She was quiet for a long time, and he let her be quiet because he had learned over many years that the answers people give when they're rushed are almost never the answers that matter, and that the answers that cost something to say are the ones that tend to be true. "I want to fix it," she said. Finally, her voice was quieter than he'd heard it. Not because my career depends on it. Not because the board is watching.
Because those 22 people who left this company, I read their names in that report. I know some of those names. I remember some of those people. And they left this company carrying something that I put there without knowing I was putting it there. And I can't I can't just file that under lessons learned and move on.
Caleb looked at her. I also want to say something to you specifically, she said. Say it. What I did to you on that floor. She stopped then started again.
I stood in front of 200 people and I fired a man based on how he looked. I told myself in the moment that it was about attitude, about comportment, about something I couldn't name but felt I recognized. But the truth, she stopped again. The word cost her something. The truth is that I looked at your jacket and your backpack and I made a decision about who you were before you'd said 10 words to me.
And I have been in rooms my whole career fighting to not be judged that way. And I did it anyway to you. The room was very still. Caleb sat with what she'd said. He had not expected this.
Not this specific form of it, not this directness, not the particular quality of accountability that didn't come packaged with any visible agenda. He had expected professionalism. He had expected competence in strategy and the sophisticated management of an uncomfortable situation by a person who was very good at managing uncomfortable situations. He had not expected this. Can I tell you something?
He said please. The morning I walked in here the first time. He said I was prepared for exactly what happened. Not the specific details I didn't know it would be you. I didn't know what form the moment would take, but I knew based on what I'd been hearing for months that something like that moment was possible.