A few week nights back, I sat down with Mr. Whiskey on the Couple O'Nukes podcast to talk about leadership, moral injury, and the difference between managing people and actually seeing them. Somewhere in that conversation, something clicked into place that I don't think I'd said out loud quite that plainly before. Most people who sit across from me don't need the three months of process behind why I'd do something a certain way. They just need to be met at the table we are already sitting at.

[If you have time and would like to, click here to listen to the episode on Spotify. Also find more of the great work Mr. Whiskey is doing at coupleonukes.com.]

Beef tenderloin, a mix of shiitake, oyster, and cremini mushrooms, thin slices of aged prosciutto, puff pastry, a small jar of English mustard. Twenty-four hours of work before anyone ever sits down. Browning, seasoning, a spread built and chilled, wrapped and chilled again, an egg wash, a knife scored just right across the top, then the oven, then the plate.

There was a stretch of my life where I got obsessed with recreating the dishes I'd watch on Hell's Kitchen until I felt like I'd actually earned them. Months of testing. Buying tools I didn't need yet. Over-seasoning, under-seasoning, starting completely over.

Nobody at the table ever asked why English mustard instead of Dijon, or prosciutto instead of parma ham. Nobody needed the three months of planning or testing. They needed the plate in front of them, and that was enough, and I never once resented that. I loved the work. I just didn't need everyone else to love it with me.

It took me a long time to realize I'd forgotten that everywhere else in my life. Somewhere along the way I started handing people the whole recipe when all they'd actually asked for was dinner.

Early in my career, I told someone who worked for me that his wife needed to understand the mission comes first. That's the military. That's what we signed up for.

I said it with the certainty of someone reciting a recipe he'd memorized. I wasn't wrong about the mission. I was wrong about what he needed sitting across from me in that moment. I found out later it hadn't gone well for him at home. I still think about that more than I'd like to admit.

I gave him the standard. What he needed was someone willing to actually look at his plate, instead of insisting he eat mine.

Justice, if it means anything at all, means giving someone what they're actually due. I gave him doctrine. He needed to be heard first.

Years later I sat across from a leader of my own who told me, flatly, that I needed to get my shit together. They had no idea what I was carrying that season. To be fair, I'd never told them.

My instinct was to argue the plate. Other tables in my life had taught me that was allowed, that you could push back on what the chef put in front of you if you thought it was unfair or undercooked. So I almost did. I almost explained myself, defended myself, made the case for why the dish he'd served me was wrong.

What I actually needed wasn't a better dish, or an argument about the one I'd been given. I needed to stop showing up to that particular table for a while. Not forever. Not dramatically. Just long enough to figure out what I still had left to bring to it.

That's the piece I kept missing, on both sides of it. Sometimes someone doesn't need the three months of process behind our decisions. Sometimes they don't even need the plate. Sometimes the most honest thing either of us can do is admit we shouldn't be sitting at that table tonight at all. Or figure out what it takes for both of us to enjoy the same meal.

Handing someone the whole recipe when they only wanted dinner is its own kind of not seeing them, and then blaming ourselves that no one understands. So is insisting you can sit at a table you have nothing left to bring to, just because leaving feels like losing.

The discernment was never really about mushrooms, or standards, or performance reviews. It's about actually looking at the other person, or the version of yourself, sitting there, and asking what yourself, or they, need from this exact moment. Not what you'd want to give them. Not what you were given once, by someone else, at a different table entirely.

Togetherness doesn't start with everyone agreeing on what's for dinner. It starts with someone honest enough to notice which table they're actually sitting at.

Thank you for sitting with this one. This is another small step on the wayward path to restoring togetherness.

More soon, from further down the path. Until then, keep wayfinding.