Someone You Know Feels Invisible Today

Recently I asked one of our daughters… what I thought was a simple question.

“Why do so many people devote so much of their precious lives… to broadcasting on Social Media?”

Now you’re smiling.
Because you know that the answer is anything but simple.

And the comment that stood out for me was… well, deep.

“We broadcast on these platforms… because we have something to say.
And we want to be heard.”

I thought back to the days in my financial services career…
when I thought I had something worth saying.

When I desperately wanted to be heard.

And wasn’t.

It was a quiet ache in my life.

Our nationally-spread company was pioneering in many ways.
With an extraordinarily bright, visionary, caring CEO.

But, even when leading my own team…
 there was no platform to say what I really thought and felt.

About things that were deeply wrong with financial services generally.
The way that the sector taught us to view people as assets to be gathered (AUM).

I sensed that a better way for me to influence the problem…
Was to step outside of it.

So, eventually, I did that bonkers thing.

I started out on my own..
In a completely new career.

As a Coach.
Bonkers.

What fascinated me was how many doors to reality this opened for me.

The chance to see beyond the PR and hyperbole…
the posturing and performing…
the websites and newsletters.

And guess what I discovered?

Hundreds of frustrated voices.
Voices with something to say.
Voices unheard.

Hundreds.

The quiet ache in too many firms was almost visceral.

Voices, fuelled by problem piercing minds… richly compassionate hearts…far-seeing eyes…
Are simply not being listened to.

And the world around us sees it clearly.

Those voices…

They’re the quiet ones in Monday morning meetings.
They’re the ones trapped by an imposed Job Spec.

They’re the Client Carers never invited to consider business strategy or direction.
They’re the ones completely disinterested in competing against their peers.

They do a great job for their founders and leaders.
And feel hauntingly invisible in the process.

It’s nothing they can put their finger on.
It’s just there.

That quiet ache.

What’s fascinating is that the price of this invisibility bounces right back to the top.
To the founder. To the leader.

Because what’s lost is the depth of genius behind that muffled voice.
The genius that could make all the difference to the firm’s future.

The question that now hangs there, in your role as leader?
Perhaps it’s this.

“What happens when they’ve stopped believing you will ever hear them?”

Looking back… I found my own way to make my voice heard.
I left.

Perhaps some of those quiet voices will leave too.

But that isn’t what haunts me.
What haunts me is this question…

“What happens if they don’t?”