The Day I Forgot to Wear My Mask

I was walking down the hall at the office. A person new to the department was walking toward me. As I passed her, I nodded and smiled and uttered the usual throwaway line. “How are you doing?” (The variation is, “How’s it going?”)

You don’t expect an answer. You’re being polite. But you’re not committing yourself to anything more than hearing a “Fine” in return. You have work to do, meetings to attend, people to talk to, all of the general busy-ness of contemporary work life.

“Do you really want to know?” she replied in an almost anguished voice.

She knew the politeness-in-the-hallway code. And something had prompted her to step out of it.

I stopped, and said what I didn’t really mean. “Yes. Are you okay?”

For the next 30 minutes (we moved to her office), a story poured out that seemed more like fiction than reality.

She came from a well-known and socially prominent local family. Her parents were always somewhere else, traveling. Her brother was in parts unknown. She was caring for an elderly aunt who alternated between lucidity and dementia, often in seconds. The aunt was terrified that someone would get control of her estate and have her committed to an institution, and for a very good reason: she herself had made a career out of doing exactly that – getting control of elderly people’s estates and then having them committed. To add to the mix, my new work colleague was being stalked by a distant relative, who himself was trying to get control of her aunt’s estate.

And all I had asked was how she was doing.

We became friends, and she became friends with my wife as well. We talked. We shared outside-of-work writing projects. We’d have dinner. It was only after we moved to a new town that our friendship gradually lessened. But our lives, and my life, was immeasurably enriched by that simple exchange in a workplace hallway.

None of us wore masks. My friend was feeling desperate. I decided to listen.

In The Cure: What if God Isn’t Who You Think He Is and Neither Are You, authors John Lynch, Bruce McNichol and Bill Thrall cite three categories mask-wearers fall into.

Those who try to convince others they’re doing “just fine.”

Those who are still searching for the next new technique to solve their issues and problems (and are the target audience of the self-help book publishing industry).

And those who wear the “pedigreed” masks – the postcard-perfect people who have everything together, no problems, no messy stuff in their lives.

The normal answer my work colleague should have made was “I’m fine, thank you” and walked on. But she didn’t. Her response caught me off-guard. I could have immediately donned a mask, probably the pedigreed mask. I could have listened politely and moved on.

But I didn’t. I could hear the desperation and even fear in her voice. So I listened.

And it changed my life.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The Cure. To see more posts on this chapter, “Two Faces,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. 

We All Wear Masks

We all wear masks.

The Sunday-morning-at-church mask.

The go-to-work-every-day mask.

The how-we-behave-at-parties mask. (My favorite mask in this category: the cocktail-reception mask. I hate cocktail receptions.)

The how-we-talk-to-neighbors mask.

The we’re-dealing-with-a-difficult-family-issue mask.

The annual-job-performance-review mask (either giving one or receiving one).

The I-have-to-deliver-bad-news mask.

We know why we wear masks. Masks protect. They make us less vulnerable. They defend against the unwanted and unexpected. And in The Cure: What if God Isn’t Who You Think He Is and Neither Are You, authors John Lynch, Bruce McNichol and Bill Thrall point out masks do other things, too.

“We can gain admiration and respect from behind a mask,” they write. “We can even intimidate.”

I’ve had bosses who were world-class mask wearers. Nothing is more gratifying than to become a supervisor or manager of people – a “people leader,” in today’s organizational lexicon. And nothing is more terrifying. Training programs abound, and I’ve taken bad ones and good ones. But no matter how good a training program for leading people is, it’s no substitute for the real thing. Leading people is largely a learn-by-doing undertaking. Trial by fire.

So we wear masks.  Masks can (in theory) help us from looking inexperienced, stupid, or incompetent.

The first time I actually supervised another person – 1984 – the company had no training program. You just did it. And my person was a “problem person” – someone who had been agitating for a better opportunity but did not have the right degree or experience for the opportunity desired.

I had all kinds of words of wisdom, which I largely ignored. I decided to treat the individual as if they knew most of what they should be doing. I didn’t set unrealistic expectations, for the person or for myself. I helped when it was needed, but this was a “working up to expectations” relationship. And the individual surprised everyone and did exactly that.

I didn’t wear a mask.

Fast forward 20 years. This time I was asked to supervise a function with two people. One of them was considered “a problem.” But no one had ever told the individual that. I was told it was up to me to “get rid of the problem.”

I found the euphemism for “real live human being” offensive. And previous supervisors had simply not done what they should have done.

I sat down with the person and explained the issue. And surprise – they already knew (they usually do). We worked through a three-month performance plan, with weekly check-ins. At the end of it, the individual gave a candid – and accurate – assessment of the results. They left the company a few weeks later. It had been a difficult situation, but one thing was vitally important.

Neither of us wore a mask, as tempting as it was.

The authors of The Cure point out that “as long as we’re behind a mask, any mask, we will not be able to receive love. Then, in our desperation to be loved, we’ll rush to fashion more masks, hoping the next will give us what we’re longing for: To be known, accepted, trusted and loved.”

When you wear a mask, they say, only the mask receives love. Or respect.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The Cure. To see more posts on this chapter, “Two Faces,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines. Next week we’ll conclude the discussion on this chapter.

Photograph by Junior Libby via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.