“Early on in my career as an attorney,” Theo began, “I joined a law firm in Boston and was assigned to work on a major financing project involving thirty banks around the world. Our client was the lead lender on the deal, and I was thrilled to be involved.”
Theo smiled, remembering. “It had all the things I’d dreamed about during the long grind of law school: international travel, intricate legal issues, the chance to network with high-profile people, and dollar amounts with more zeros than I’d ever seen. I was the second-most-junior member of the team, and my job was to draft the fifty or so agreements that sat underneath the major lending contract. It was a heavy load of tedious work, but I was eager to prove myself.
“Just one week after I’d been assigned to the project, Tracie and I found out she was pregnant with our first child. Between my work and our baby preparations, the next eight months flew by. On December 22, our son David was born. We couldn’t have been more nervous or more excited.”
The memory shone in Theo’s eyes. He looked from Ana to Tom. “Do either of you have kids?”
Ana smiled. “I have a nine-year-old daughter named Miranda and a six-year-old son, Mateo.”
Tom cleared his throat as Theo looked at him. “Yeah, my daughter, Rebecca. She’s almost sixteen.”
“It changes everything, doesn’t it?” Theo leaned forward. “Like the world has a new center of gravity.
“Anyway, I worked hard to wrap up or trade off my assignments so that I could take three weeks off when David was born. We were exhausted and we were happy.
“But then came the phone call. It was December 29. The lead partner on the deal wanted everyone in San Francisco at the client’s offices, ASAP. Some details had shifted in a way that dramatically shortened our timeline, and it was all hands on deck.
“‘How long?’” I asked.
“‘We’re here until the deal closes—could be three weeks, could be three months.’
“I was crushed to leave Tracie and our week-old baby. And I felt robbed of the extra time off I had earned.”
Ana made a sympathetic noise.
“It took me two days to get ready to leave. If Tracie’s sister hadn’t volunteered to help out, I’m not sure what we would have done.
“When I arrived, I discovered that I was the last one on the scene, and I got razzed for being late to the party. No one asked about our baby. The only remaining guest office was on the twenty-first floor. The deal headquarters, and everyone else, was on the twenty-fifth. So I hunkered down and got to work, barely noticing the start of the new year. From six in the morning until after midnight each day, I tried to finalize the various details of the legal agreements. Two or three times a day I would go down to the deli in the lobby and buy an overpriced and underwhelming sandwich or salad. Then I’d eat while poring over the documents. I felt alone on the twenty-first floor, isolated with my work and my photos from home.
“I called Tracie most afternoons. Between student debt, the cost of living in Boston, and the baby expenses, we were pretty cash-strapped. Plus, long-distance calls were expensive back then, so the phone calls were short. They left me longing for home and feeling more bitter about the project.”
Tom was listening to the story with his arms folded across his chest, his mouth a straight line. Ana’s head was slightly tilted, concern on her face.
“If you had asked me at the time what my work objective was, I would have probably said, ‘Drafting the best possible documents to protect our client and close the deal,’ or something like that. I was clearly committed, right?”
Ana nodded, and Tom shrugged agreement.
“But you should know a couple of other things about this experience. All of the key negotiations were happening on the twenty-fifth floor. They should have been very important to me.” Theo tapped on the table to punctuate each word he said next. “Every single change to the deal made on the twenty-fifth floor had to be accounted for in the documents I was drafting.
“But I didn’t go up to twenty-five much. In fact, it wasn’t until after ten days of lackluster deli food that I noticed there was round-the-clock catering on the twenty-fifth floor for everyone working on the deal.”
Ana winced.
“That sure would’ve been nice to know, right?” Theo said. “I got chewed out on two occasions for not including some of the latest adjustments in my documents, even though plenty of people could have mentioned them to me. On top of that, someone complained about me being hard to find—like it was my fault I got the worst office.”
Tom settled his chin against his fist, elbow on the conference table.
“Let me ask you both,” Theo said, “just from what you now know about my San Francisco experience, would you say that I was really committed to ‘drafting the best possible documents to protect our client and close the deal’?”
“No,” Tom answered without hesitation. “You were preoccupied with missing your family and how you weren’t being included, so your focus wasn’t actually on the result.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem entirely fair,” Ana objected. “Your boss pulled you in to work during your time off, and you probably should’ve had parental leave to begin with.”
“Valid points,” Theo said. “And later, when I left that firm, it was mostly because I needed to find a better work-life balance. But Tom is also right,” Theo continued. “I wasn’t fully engaged.
“When I joined the firm, I knew I was signing up for long hours and inconvenient travel. But here—when we most needed the project to come together—my frustration and resentment were keeping me from offering my best work. I wasn’t thinking about our client, my coworkers, or any of the other people impacted by the way I was doing my job.”
Tom was nodding. Ana looked unconvinced.
“But how do you think I would have reacted if anyone had told me I seemed distracted, or uncommitted, or disengaged?” Theo asked.
Tom grunted, “Not well. People hate being called out.”
“I’m sure I would have gotten defensive,” Theo replied. “And I had plenty of excuses! After all, who left behind a new baby? I did. Who was working eighteen-to-twenty-hour days? I was.” His voice started to rise. “Who was essentially exiled to work four floors beneath everyone else? Me. And who got left out of basic details like food plans and contract changes? All me.
“As far as I knew, no one else had the challenges I did, but I was working hard despite them. In fact, in my mind, I might’ve been the most committed and engaged person on the deal! But any member of my team could have told you I had a problem,” Theo continued, “a problem with my focus, my engagement, and even my performance. I was failing to catch issues I was hired to anticipate, and it was negatively impacting our project at a critical moment.
“But I had an even deeper problem,” Theo said. “Any guesses?”
Tom and Ana glanced at each other, but neither spoke.
Theo leaned forward. “The bigger problem was that I couldn’t see I had a problem.”