I almost never catch myself slipping into my second person, where a disembodied ‘he’ replaces me. I’m a zombie then, looking for fresh brains, undead but not yet realizing it. I feel strangely powerful when I pad myself behind some projected persona rather than presenting myself as just my little old self. I can spew mindless he-mes as if they were genuine self-reflection, and I’m usually the last to know. Again.

I have too much experience scraping self discovery off my shoe, but only ever after tracking it all over the place, the last person to learn again. Sometimes, it seems as though I must disembody to show well, to play in the same league as The Big Boys, whose vitaes read like superhero spec sheets. Curiously, those, too, seem disembodied, and I’m left wondering with whom I am having the pleasure of interacting.

Who-ey, the myriad ways I deflect connection, can effectively neutralize BriefConsulting. I can rely upon every client to project some variant of their best face, and for all the apparently very best reasons. I will usually enter the engagement certain only that I have no clue who I’m engaging with, and could not. I will have read his brief biographical summary, history of the quality necessary for Polit Bureaus and resumes, right and proper who-ey, but the story behind that story won’t emerge until my client shows up and our ‘I’s meet.

One prospective client explained that, with my reputation, she expected me to show up in a wizard suit. On my next visit, I did, giving her a glimpse of who I might be behind the promotional material’s perhaps necessary fiction. None of us wonder for a minute why we insist upon constructing these who-ey battlements around us. It doesn’t feel safe to engage as we are, yet we cannot accomplish much encumbered behind our who-ey defenses. There are no hands-off transformations, no second person changes, BriefConsulting might be better described as bare-assed consulting once the who-ey disperses and us ‘I’s have at it.

©2014 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: Working