He Hadn't Spoken to His Son in 10 Years. He Couldn't Remember Why.

There May Be Someone on Your Team You've Quietly Stopped Talking To.

A few years ago I was at a pub at Yonge and Eglinton in Toronto with a couple of friends. Nothing special about the night. A few pints, a room full of strangers. It was the kind of evening where you end up talking to whoever is next to you at the bar especially lubricated by a few beers.

The man beside me was named Jimmy. He was older than me. He'd come over from Ireland about twenty years earlier and never left.

I asked if he had family nearby.

He said he had a son. He shared they hadn't spoken in almost ten years.

I'd had enough beer to keep going, so I asked what had happened. Jimmy thought about it for a while. Then he told me he couldn't really remember. There had been something. He knew there had been something. He couldn't put his finger on what it was or which one of them had started it.

I asked if he missed him.

He said every day.

I asked why he didn't just call.

Jimmy shrugged.

The shrug is the whole thing

I've thought about that shrug more than almost anything else anyone has said to me in a bar.

It wasn't indifference. He'd just told me he missed his son every day. It wasn't pride either, or at least it didn't look like pride. It looked like a man who had lost the thread and didn't know where to pick it back up.

Because here's the trap Jimmy was in. To reach out after ten years, you have to say something about the ten years. And to say something about the ten years, you need to know what they were about. He didn't. Whatever the original injury was, it had dissolved years ago and left only the distance behind. So every time he thought about picking up the phone, he ran into the same wall, which was that he had no idea what he'd be apologizing for or asking about or referring to.

The rupture was gone. The gap it opened stayed open, on its own, without anyone maintaining it.

I meet a lot of Jimmys at work

Almost every leader I work with has someone on their team they've stopped talking to properly. It wasn’t a conflict, but more of an awkwardness. It wasn’t anything you'd take to HR. The longer it continues, the harder it becomes. Just a person who used to come by and doesn't anymore, or a one on one that turned into a status update, or someone whose name comes up and you feel something tighten slightly and you move on.

When I ask what happened, I get a version of Jimmy. There was a thing. Some disagreement about a project, or a piece of feedback that landed wrong, or a promotion that went the other way. Usually they can name it. Sometimes they can't. Either way, the thing itself is old and small and neither party could reconstruct it accurately now.

What isn't old and small is the year of shallow conversation that followed it.

That person is still on your team. They're still in your meetings. They're answering your questions and telling you things are fine, and you've quietly stopped expecting anything else from them, and neither of you has said a word about it.

Why it stays

These gaps persist because closing one requires somebody to raise it, and raising it means naming something that's become genuinely hard to name. The longer it sits, the more awkward the raising becomes, and the more awkward it becomes the more reasonable it seems to leave it alone for now. There's always a better week coming.

Jimmy had ten years of better weeks.

The other thing worth saying is that the two people in the gap aren't in the same position. Jimmy was the father. His son was in his twenties when this started. Whatever the original fault, Jimmy had more room to move than his son did, and more standing to move first, and he didn't use it.

At work you're Jimmy. Whatever happened between you and that person, you have the power in the room. They're not going to walk into your office and ask why things have felt off since March. That's not a thing most people can do to their manager. If it gets raised, you're the one raising it.

What I told him

I told Jimmy why I was asking. Some of what I've been through with my own family, and what it taught me about waiting.

He turned and gave me a hug and said thank you. I have no idea whether he ever called his son. I'd like to think he did. I've never found out and I probably never will.

What I do know is that he couldn't remember what started it. Ten years, every day, and the thing at the bottom of it had gone.

If there's someone on your team you've stopped talking to properly, you probably can't fully remember either. But that first step is yours to take.

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FAQ

How do I bring up something with an employee when I can't remember what caused the distance?
Don't try to reconstruct it. Reconstructing is what stops most people from starting. Name the present instead of the history. Something along the lines of, I feel like we've been operating at arm's length for a while and I'd like that to change, does the work without requiring either of you to relitigate a thing neither of you can accurately recall.

Isn't it the employee's job to raise it if something's wrong?
It isn't, in practice, whatever the policy says. You control their assignments, their review, and their next move. Walking into your office to ask why things have felt off since March carries a risk for them that it doesn't carry for you. Whoever has less to lose goes first, and that's you.

What if raising it makes things worse?
It can, briefly. A conversation that names something uncomfortable is uncomfortable. What's worth weighing is the alternative, which isn't neutral. A relationship that's been shallow for a year is already costing you information you'd want, and the person on the other side of it has usually already started looking.

How do I tell the difference between someone who's disengaged and someone who's struggling?
From the outside they look nearly identical, which is why so many managers guess wrong. Both present as reduced output, shorter answers, and less initiative. The useful question isn't which one it is. It's when it started and what else changed around the same time.

Is this the same as performance management?
No, and conflating them is where a lot of managers go wrong. Performance conversations are about output against a standard. This is about a working relationship that's degraded, which may be affecting output or may not be. Running it as performance management will confirm to the person that the distance was justified.