“You should be able to talk about anything at a moment’s notice,” this high-level exec was telling all 200-plus of his employees, including me. “You shouldn’t be afraid to engage someone else. You should be able to talk about anything for three minutes, unprompted.”
I was about six weeks into a new role at a Corporate Giant, sitting alone in a huge telepresence room. The company was so big, in fact, that I didn’t have one co-worker at the same building. No, all of my colleagues were scattered across other parts of the country. I could see them all, collected on a checkerboard of ravioli-sized rooms on a giant screen, with our site locations listed beneath each one. There was a black onyx table in my room with a dozen chairs situated neatly all around it. I’d chosen a seat near the back of the room, hoping to make it through the meeting unnoticed. As the exec droned on about workplace communication, I glanced at the locations: Texas. Florida. Delaware. Illinois. We were all over the place. In early sobriety, as I was, I related to that disconnection all too well.
“You shouldn’t ever be caught off-guard,” he continued. “Always have something practiced to say. If you don’t practice in private, you’ll fail in public.”
I had about a little over a year in sobriety at this point, which meant that my brain was still rewiring itself. I felt like I was three-quarters of the way materialized on the U.S.S. Enterprise transporter pad. I wasn’t quite all there. Even in my job, I felt like a fraud and that I didn’t belong. (Ever hear of imposter syndrome? Well, turns out that it’s real and I had it.) So I sat alone in the room, putting on my best impression of someone who was paying attention to the leader on the screen. I furrowed my brow and took the occasional note. He was 1,500 miles away and I could feel every inch of distance between us. We’d never meet in real life. He’d never know my name. Hell, he probably didn’t even know what my department actually did.
“Let’s practice,” he pivoted on a shiny heel, turning to the giant screen behind him that displayed all of our locations.
I quietly shook my head, stealing a glance at my phone. The meeting was lasting forever.
“Let’s try this one,” he pointed at a room. “Columbus, Ohio. Are you there?”
I froze. That was me. The Russian Roulette of telepresence rooms hadn’t worked in my favor. My body jolted with blue-flame adrenaline and my hand shook as I unmuted my line.
“Me?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, smiling in that casually distant way that all effective leaders are skilled at. He wasn’t smiling so much as waiting for me to act. His brain already miles ahead of this part of his presentation. “Three minutes. You’re on the clock, Columbus. Why don’t you introduce yourself and then tell everyone something?”
My brain quickly scrabbled through the handful of things I confidently knew: James Bond film release dates, basic racquetball strategies, R.E.M.’s discography, how to sneak vodka into work without getting caught, and the differences between cat breeds. Suddenly, I could feel every eye on the screen zero in on me, no matter how small everyone’s faces were. The collective weight of the department’s faces bearing down on me was almost too much to process. I decided to go with R.E.M. and how “Shiny Happy People” doesn’t belong on 1991’s Out of Time. I could then segue into Automatic for the People.
But first, I had to introduce myself.
“Hi, I’m Paul,” I tossed it off, “and I’m an alcoholic.”
The air suddenly rushed out of my room like someone had just thrown open a spacecraft airlock. Hundreds of faces stared back at me on the telepresence screen, not sure what to say. They were as frozen and uncertain what to do as I was when I’d been called on. Many people laughed, thinking it was a joke. Others saw that I was serious. A couple people winced, catching that this was clearly unplanned. Regardless, this was uncharted territory for everyone. Even the exec leading the meeting seemed to snap out of his memorized talking points, regarding me with actual humanity.
I hadn’t just announced this in some basement AA room where I was absently swirling coffee in a styrofoam cup. Nope. I’d just accidentally outed myself as a recovering alcoholic to 200-some people I barely knew. Being open and honest about my sobriety wasn’t something that I’d really given much consideration to. I’d told my family and some friends by this point. But I knew there were people out there who were open about it—brash, even. But my face drained color as I kept talking—I felt my career prospects starting to circle the drain. People were undoubtedly already texting others along with sidelong glances: “Can you believe what just happened?” This would be the stuff of horrible legend.
It’s over for me, I thought.
I hadn’t meant to reveal the truth. It was just Pavlovian. It was simply hard-coded into my DNA at the time—especially since I was attending two or three meetings a week. That sentence was currency with other people. It usually earned nods and approving smiles. This time, I got wide-eyed shock. Regardless, I thought of my friend Shawn, who I’ve known since third grade. We’re both in our forties now and he still rocks a non-ironic mohawk. He’s a music producer and he’s built something of a persona for himself, complete with the haircut. One of his favorite phrases? “Go big or go home.” That’s exactly what flashed through my brain at the moment as my adrenaline burned off.
I was going big.
So I leaned into it. All that R.E.M. talk just melted away, and I shared an abbreviated story about my drinking days from start to finish. In less than three minutes, I articulated as much of it as I could. It was bizarre, too, confessing the ugly details of my alcoholic past to a screen of anonymous people. Still, they all stared. No one whispered; no one looked away. I had their attention. I told them about how I’d passed out and forgotten to pick up my son from kindergarten; I shared how rehab didn’t work for me the first time and how, two weeks later, I was in a car chugging a tall boy. I revealed how I couldn’t be trusted. I then also told them all how I’d been given a second chance at life through recovery—how it wasn’t so much a second lease on life so much as a first go-around at it. As an alcoholic, I hadn’t made any choices. I hadn’t made any meaningful relationships or any promises that mattered. I hadn’t lived. I even got into how grateful I was that I had a job in the first place.
I connected.
I’m not saying that breaking one’s anonymity is advisable, but I’m also saying my anonymity wasn’t all that important to me. Soon after, I realized that letting the world know about my sobriety was a scorched-earth campaign. I couldn’t give myself an “out” with drinking. Never again. In that moment, the words just came. Nothing had been rehearsed; no bullet points had been organized. I just talked. I’d never been that honest in my life. And when it was all over, there was stunned silence.
“And with that,” I said, as if I was in a roomful of fellow drunks, “I pass.”
The exec appeared on the telepresence screen, trying to summon the right emotion. Finally, he cleared his throat and simply said, “Thank you for your honesty.” And then he jumped right into other communication skills that are important in the workplace, careful to not call on another person the rest of the meeting.
I didn’t get a talking-to from my manager. I didn’t lose my job. I didn’t lose my credibility. If nothing else, I gained some semblance of respect from people I didn’t know. A few anonymous cards later arrived on my desk via inter-office mail, thanking me for what I’d said. And while I’d accidentally stumbled into a moment of bravery, it didn’t make it any less impactful. I’d kept moving forward; I didn’t back down from it. After all, that’s what I’ve discovered sobriety actually is: constantly moving forward and finding random moments of strength amidst all the doubt and disorder. I’ve also found that the high-level exec was right during his presentation: it’s important to be able to discuss anything at a moment’s notice. As I’ve gained more sobriety, though, it’s far more important for me to have something meaningful and true to say than a three-minute speech on why R.E.M.’s “Shiny Happy People” is a gloriously, inexcusably terrible track. (Which it is. Please don’t argue.)
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