My pen flies. It smoothly spins around my thumb. Under, over, I catch it. Again. I’ve done this for so many years. Practice made perfect. No idea when it started. School. University. Doesn’t matter. It hardly ever drops. Extremely impressive skill, no? I need it on LinkedIn.
Under, over. Around. Catch.
Mira is sitting next to me. Not opposite. You’re not supposed to sit opposite of people. That would be arguing and fighting. No, we sit ninety degrees. Less confrontational. More human.
They taught that at a leadership training. All these little tricks. Hold the silence. Ask open questions. Don’t cross your arms. Sit beside people. Let them find the answer. Steer them softly. To the destination you picked.
My pen goes around. Not falling. Never.
Mira talks a lot. That’s not criticism, not at all. Put a question into our team chat and she’ll answer first. Ask for help and she’s there to talk you through it. The meeting is silent? She’s out sick.
Mira has ideas. Mira has opinions. She argues with colleagues. With me. Especially with me because I argue back. If there’s something she doesn’t understand, she says she doesn’t understand and asks for another explanation. No bullshit attitude.
And she feels people. Someone goes quiet mid-discussion. She knows why. Someone gets pissed. She knows why. Someone laughs but is silently hurting. Somehow Mira fucking knows why, again. She carries people. Their problems. Their moods. Their good days. Their terrible ones. Someone needs confidence, Mira tells them they’re great.
The introduction got out of hand. You still there? Well, Mira and I are. We’re here. It’s one of our normal one-on-ones. She’s having a great day. She’s happy. We’re coming off a refinement session in which she spotted a severe security risk. I tell her. How important her spotting this risk was. How well she did there. She immediately starts returning the compliment.
“Yeah, but the others helped a lot as well.”
“They did.”
“And Thomas prepared the refinement perfectly.”
“I know.”
When she’s about to defer further, I stop her.
“Mira.”
“What?”
My pen goes over my thumb. I catch it. As always.
“Why are you underselling yourself again?”
She looks confused. Or plays confused. I’m not sure. “What do you mean?”
“Oh come on, you know”, I respond.
“No?”
“You did great today. You are a great developer. Why are you so reluctant to just take the compliment?”
“I’m not reluctant. I’m just realistic.” Ah. Realistic. Such a polite knife.
“I’m not that amazing,” she says. “The others are also good.”
“Stop.”
“What?”
“That.”
She smiles. “I’m just saying the others are good too.”
“I know.”
“So what?”
“We’re talking about you, not them.”
“Ok.”
“So. Let’s talk about you.”
“What about me?”
“You’re one of the best developers on this team.”
She looks away. “Maybe. But you know that I don’t like to talk about me or praise myself.”
Not I’m not good. Not you’re wrong. And yes, by now, I know that she does not like the spotlight and especially not the praise. Still, I challenge her. I push.
“Why?”
She shrugs. “There’s always things to learn. Or ways to get better.”
“Sure. But you’re already very good at what you do. Right now.”
“But I don’t have to like talking about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because that makes me feel arrogant. And I don’t like arrogant people.”
My turn to smile. Finally a topic I have experience with personally. Arrogance.
“I tell people I’m good all the time.”
“Yes.”
Way too fast. Little shit. We’re about to make some real progress now.
“Well, your turn now. Say it.”
“What?”
My pen keeps going. Around and around and around. No sound.
“Tell me you’re very good.”
“I already did.”
“No. Maybe you did a little. But we started at the security problem, I complimented you and you immediately told me the other developers are good too.”
“Because they are.”
“Mira.”
“What do you want?”
“Tell me how good you are. Not them.”
She stares at me.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“Go.”
A few seconds of silence. That rarely ever happens with Mira. She’s waiting for me. Hoping, searching for an escape. The I’m not actually going to make you go through with this escape.
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“This is stupid.”
“I don’t think so.”
She looks at the pen. Back at me.
“Okay. I’m good.”
“Is that a question?”
“Oh come on.”
“That was terrible.”
“I said it.”
“Say it again. Convincingly.” As if that were that easy. Right here, on the spot.
She stares at me. The smiles are all gone.
“Seriously?”
My pen keeps spinning. Dancing.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
It’s all psychology. Leadership tricks, you remember. Say it out loud. Hear yourself say it. Repeat. Practice made perfect. The books are always clever. And all the while I’m sitting next to a woman who clearly hates this. Really hates it. Hates me using managerial authority to make her praise herself repeatedly.
“I want you to simply say it and mean it.”
“You’re enjoying this”, she counters.
“A little.”
“Douchebag.”
“Still. Go again.”
“I’m a good developer.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“I do. You tell me.”
“Jonas, this is stupid.”
“You said that before.”
She stares towards the window. “I’m good at finding bugs and fixing them. I have a lot of domain knowledge. I help people.”
“You’re just good?”
“Ok! I’m very good at fixing bugs.”
“What else?”
“Sometimes, I find things other people miss.”
I don’t respond. She fills the silence.
“Fine, I find them most of the time.”
“And?”
“I solve other people’s problems.”
“Fair enough. What else? We’re not done yet.” I press on.
“I don’t know. And I still don’t like this. Can we please stop?” My fingers spin another round. And another one. Flying. The pen never taking off. Sticking to my thumb.
Again.
She finally tries.
A maybe dies.
Again.
Another I think survives. I have her kill it next try.
Again.
She goes back to hiding behind somebody else. AGAIN.
“The team—”
“No.”
“What?”
“Not the team.”
“But—”
“You.”
She looks genuinely pissed now.
Good. No. Maybe not good. Let me remove maybe. Definitely not good. I pushed too far. I can tell myself she can stop this whenever she wants. I can pretend. But power doesn’t just disappear because I sit ninety degrees next to her.
“I’m very good at what I do,” she says. “I’m technically strong. I solve complex problems. I learn fast. People come to me when they need help.”
“Why?”
“Because they trust me.”
“And?”
She looks at me. Stares. The piercing murder look.
“Because I’m very good at it.”
I smile. She doesn’t. I can see how hard this is for her. I can’t feel it. I’ve never had any trouble saying I’m good at something. The opposite rather. Still, I see her struggling. I see how much she hates me making her look arrogant. To her. Confident. To me.
“Again.”
She answers. Defeated.
“I’m very good at my job. I see things other people don’t see. I solve hard problems. People trust me. I make the team better. I’m a great teammate.”
Silence.
“Yes, you are” I say.
She looks away again. Later, I would hear about this conversation again. Quite a lot of it, actually. She told her colleagues straight away. And boy, did this story get popular fast. Months later, Mira told me herself. How horrible it felt. How physically wrong. But also how much it helped her in the long run. Slowly, she started catching these tiny escape doors. The ones hidden inside normal sentences.
Maybe. I think. The others. Sometimes.
Not always. This isn’t Marvel. Nobody gets bitten by a radioactive performance review and wakes up with confidence powers. Oh, do I love that sentence.
But sometimes. Sometimes she took some praise without instantly returning the compliment.
I loved noticing that. Of course I did. Look at me. Great leader. Wonderful. Somebody update my LinkedIn skills. For real, this time.
That’s me being lucky. Good consequences. Back in that room, none of those consequences existed. Yet. No grateful future Mira and no colleagues telling me how much it mattered to her. No proof that I was helping rather than just being the leader asshole that wouldn’t stop pushing her.
That room was her. Me. My pen.
“Again.”
She groans. “How often do I have to repeat that?”
“Last one.”
“You said that before.”
I don’t need to answer. She turns toward me properly now. The escape routes are slowly disappearing.
“Go.”
“I’m very good at what I do. I solve difficult problems. I see things others miss. People trust me. I make this team better.”
“I’m one of the best developers here.”
She stops. No smile. No I think. No maybe. No the team.
And that’s it. She just sits there. Calm.
I notice my own thumb. The pen moving. Over. Under. Oh shit. It slips. Stupidly loud, the plastic against the table. Piercing.
“Again,” Mira teases.
Oh fuck off. Yes, I know. How disgusting is this ending? This coincidence? The metaphor drops. She says again. Full circle character development. Somewhere on Substack, a creative-writing teacher just got an erection.
Except none of that really happened. No pen drop. I made it up.
I wish it had happened. Because if Mira says again, I get instant absolution. The tension drops, the joke’s on me, we’re all happy smiles. My douchebag pushing gets instant redemption. Everyone goes home beautifully transformed. Great leadership. Five stars. Off into the sunset.
No. Instead, Mira just sat there. Calm. Nothing else happened. We left. I felt bad. A little bit.
What I hate is that I am always the one left craving more. That’s the thing with me. It’s never enough. Mira wasn’t. The story wasn’t. Nothing ever is. So I push it and bend it. I make it obey. I press on. And on. And on.
The pen never drops. I am still me. Sitting in silence.