Your Company Is Safer Than Your Marriage

There is a certain kind of founder that I see all the time, who represents a specific archetype. And he is very, very proud of his company culture, which he has cultivated assiduously in order to create a place where a new employee could speak up in a meeting and say something like "well that's wrong" and not be hurt for doing so. He talks about psychological safety, he's read the literature, he talks about blameless post-mortems, etc. Any of his direct reports who wants to float a half-baked but mostly nice idea can do so, and will be met with nods and encouragement, because that is the kind of man that he is.

He goes home.

His wife talks through a little internal litmus test before saying anything aloud, to gauge if now is a good time to talk. If the idea is going to be something, she wants to know if it will stick. She wants to know, in her head, if he'll fix it or sigh and pull away into his usual corner, where the things that he finds really irritating get parked. By the point that the idea leaves her mouth, half of it has already been edited out. All the needy parts and scared parts, the parts that might require more excavation than she can muster, get pulled back in. She wants to have the logistics version of the conversation, the safest version of the conversation, the one that doesn't risk anything.

He feels the same way, only he never talks about it like this. The company is having a rough week. He doesn't say "I'm just terrified that we won't make payroll in the spring," to his wife. He says "work's busy." He is a man who has created a culture around psychological safety, and who has learned to value not being afraid as the prime facilitator for people doing their best work. He is also a man who married someone he has a little bit of fear talking to.

This is the thing about him that is special, the thing that I feel like I should talk about in the context of this letter. He's not a mean person. He is not a cruel person. He is not some kind of emotionally unavailable robot at the office. He's very good at what he does, and he has cultivated a set of soft skills around noticing when someone else is having trouble articulating something important to them, so that he can gently help them talk through it and get it out in the open. The only place that he has never applied these skills is in his own kitchen, with his wife. That is where the real conversation is happening, the one that is being edited down to the logistics-only, safe, 20 percent version of itself.

The marriage proceeds on the 20 percent version of each partner's thoughts, each assuming that the other is as safe as they feel at the office, with good reason. The two of them can go on for years like this, being nice to each other, dividing up the calendar politely and never really fighting, and slowly becoming unacquainted with the actual people that they married. This is because, at this point, the only way to find the people that they married is to hear them say the 80 percent version of something that they think or feel or want.

It doesn't seem like much while it's happening, and in fact it is pretty remarkable. It's the kind of marriage that looks like it has it all together, like two competent adults who are operating a well-oiled, low-conflict household. It looks like peace, because it is peace, only it is peace with a very, very quiet war being waged at the edges. The unhappy parts of it are tucked inside of the nicer parts, wrapped in soft tissue paper and ready to be discarded. This is the most insidious way that a marriage can unravel, very quietly without anyone really noticing until it is too late.

That's where the almost annoying good news comes in. He has the skills right inside of him to fix this exact problem, because he has cultivated them assiduously in the context of his company, and he is somebody who can recognize the value of cultivating similar skills in his marriage. As mentioned above, the things that make a workplace feel safe are not some innate personality trait, but rather a set of soft skills that most people can pick up with some amount of practice.

The ability to listen to somebody's "hard news" without judgment in order to get to the root of their unhappiness and then respond accordingly. It means asking the right questions and then shutting up long enough for the answers to come out. It means rewarding people for the bravery that they are showing you, rather than punishing them for the ways that they aren't brave enough. It means giving them the room to say the scary 80 percent, because that's where the truth lives.

None of these things means he has to become a different kind of person, only that he has to apply the skills that he already has to a different part of his life. He already knows how to be a safe listener, how to coax people out of their shells and get them to say the things that they need to say in order to feel better. He just needs to start doing those things with his wife, when she is trying to have a conversation with him and can only get 20 percent of it out before the clock runs out.

He needs to apply the skills he has in listening to his company to his wife, the person that he has been married to for a very long time, and who probably has some unresolved issues with him. If she brings him those issues in the logistics version, he needs to treat them like he does at the office. If he wants to hear the scary 80 percent version of the conversation, he needs to ask her to have it like a founder, and not like a husband who is surprised that she hasn't had it sooner.

Because the logistics version of a conversation is a totally fine way to run a marriage, except when you want to know who you married. The scary 80 percent is where the marriage lives, and that's where he has been avoiding it for years in his own household without realizing it.

So, if you are that founder who presides at the head of the table and makes it safe for everyone else to have scary conversations, here is the question for you. When was the last time you made it safe for someone else to have a scary conversation with you, across the dinner table? You already know how to do it, because that's what you do all day for a living.

Dr. Jené Verchick, PsyD, has written extensively about the marriages of founders and high-achievers, and sees couples working through distance, overwork, and quiet disconnection at her Los Angeles practice. A clinical psychologist with 26+ years working with couples, she helps driven partners bring the same honesty home that they built everywhere else.