My two sons were both born in London. Ben was born just after midnight on a Tuesday in the middle of April, 2010, at St Thomas’ Hospital, right by the River Thames. As my wife and I cradled the chubby, spiky haired little human we’d created, we gazed out of the window and watched the sun come up over the Houses of Parliament on the other side of the dirty old river. I’ll never forget that morning.
As any of you who’ve had more than one child will appreciate, it’s a bit more hazy with the second one. I know Jack was born in Kings Hospital in South East London, at around 11ish, and I think it might have been a Wednesday but don’t quote me on it.
One thing I do remember is texting my dad to say we’d had a another boy [for both children we decided not to find out the sex in advance, simply because there aren’t many times in your life that you get a true, total, life-changing surprise, and we figured finding out if it’s a boy or a girl is one of them] and him texting back to say he already had three grandsons and had ordered a girl and could we take it back and get a refund?
I also remember three-and-a-half-year-old Ben meeting Jack for the very first time, holding him carefully in his lap and then quietly starting to cry. When we asked him what was wrong, he looked up from his little brother and, smiling through the tears, said
“I just love him so much”
Cue additional tears from all the surrounding parents and grandparents. And, I can tell you, cue his old dad reaching for a tissue as he writes this nearly 12 years later, with the sound of those two boys bickering about who’s turn it is on the Playstation just next door to where I’m sitting.
But anyway, this isn’t really about their respective births, believe it or not [although it was a nice excuse to dig out those pictures and show them to you, I’m sure you’ll agree]. It’s not even really about the fact that they were born in London and brought up in London for the first few years of their lives, but we’ll hover here for a bit if you don’t mind? [And even if you do mind, we’re going to need to do it anyway because it’s part of the narrative and so it’s kind of important. Not like this bit. Oh no, this is just a waste of time really – a deliberate detour designed to disrupt. Good bit of alliteration eh? I love the allure of alliteration, don’t you? Anyway this really is getting silly now: I’d skip to the next bit if I were you.]
I don’t know if you’ve ever driven around London, or been driven around London, but it’s pretty hectic. Not Bangkok tuk-tuk hectic, or Paris aggressively maniacal hectic, but hectic nonetheless.
I’m pretty good on a bike but at the time my wife would probably have been considered more of a ‘provisional’ bicycle rider, getting one of those big ‘P’ signs that nervous parents put on the cars of their all-too-confident new drivers in the UK.
Put those together and “family bike ride” was never going to be on the agenda really. So [feeling very guilty about it of course, because guilt and parenthood are such happy bedfellows] we didn’t get round to teaching them how to ride a bike until we moved out into the countryside,
[Isn’t it funny how riding a bike is one of those things that literally everyone is expected to learn how to do? Cycling and swimming, What exalted company bike-riding has been keeping! Not knowing how to swim could result in a tragic death by drowning headline in a local newspaper. Not knowing how to ride a bike could result in… having to walk for a bit? Maybe catching a bus? Yet if I met someone who couldn’t ride a bike, before I could stop myself I’d blurt out “you can’t ride a bike??” in an incredulous and slightly high-pitched voice like they’d told me they’d never learnt to tie their shoelaces or use a knife and fork.]
Do you remember learning how to ride a bike? I do. I remember being on the path at the back of our house with my dad [two mentions in one blog eh Dad? You’ll be feeling all spoilt!] doing that funny bent-over run, holding on to the back of the saddle until I’d picked up speed and then… has he let go?… I think he’s let go… I’m riding a bike!!
And then, of course, I’d probably got for a bit, wobble, then fall off and graze the skin of my knee on the hard gravel of the path.
But with our own boys we never quite got round to it. Always something easier and more relevant to do in old London town, of course. So it wasn’t until we’d got out of the “Big Smoke™️” that we started to think about getting it sorted.
And when we eventually did, bikes and padding and helmets all gleaming in the summer sunshine, I got to experience something I’d not experienced before:
“The letting go”.
Letting go of the back of the saddle with the knowledge [not the “fear”, please note Dear Reader, but the absolute certain knowledge] that whatever son I was holding onto would go for a bit, wobble, then fall off and graze the skin off their knee on the hard ground of the village cricket pitch which we’re fortunate to have just through the little gate at the end of our garden.
And with that, the knowledge our younger son – the same one you remember in the arms of his elder brother all those years ago – will go absolutely ape-shit and say he doesn’t want to ride a stupid bike anyway.
And the knowledge that you’re going to do it again, and again, and again, until he stops the wobble and fall off bit. Might not happen today, but eventually it will.
Cut to the present., and really the actual point of this particular ramble through the brambles on memory lane.
A good few months back now, I was talking to a senior copywriter at work [he’s left now but there’s a chance he might read this so “hello Andy mate!” just in case!], and we were sharing thoughts on the responsibility of managing people, and delegating, and getting the balance right between pushing forward and holding back; between freedom and support.
[Yeah yeah, I know, you’re way ahead of me here. I would expect nothing less from such an astute reader as your good self.]
And of course we ended up talking about parenting in general, and then specifically about that moment: the letting go.
Managing people is really all about that moment, or series of moments. Knowing when to give someone the extra space to work on a project or try something different or do the first draft of a piece of work with the knowledge that what you get back could be totally perfect first time, but the chances are it’ll need a little polishing here and there.
The most important part of this is what happens next, of course.
Let me ask you: what would have happened if, when one of the boys had fallen off, under the guise of protecting them but probably also just thinking it would be a lot quicker and easier, I’d just taken the bike and ridden it myself? I end up with a bad back from riding a bike too small for me, and they end up still unable to ride a bike [and, horror of horrors, having to walk instead. Anyway we’ve covered that haven’t we?].
Managing and delegation aren’t the same thing, but they’re interconnected. If you can’t delegate – really delegate, letting go again and again as people learn – then really you’re not managing. At best you’re stifling. At worst you’re doing what was once described to me as “seagull management”, where you fly around over the top of things and occasionally come down and shit all over everything [and presumably also steal some chips from a chubby kid in a pushchair, but I fear I may be following this particular analogy too far down the road]..
I’ve seen brilliant people who couldn’t get their heads around delegating properly, either out of a “I don’t have the time to explain it to someone else” lack of appreciation of time management, or a “I’ll do it myself because I’ll do it better anyway” lack of understanding of their responsibility in this situation. What happened to them, do you think? That’s right, they got stuck. If you can’t delegate, you can’t progress because you’re the do-er, not the person who gets the doing done.
I may, on occasion, have done this myself over the years. I know it sounds unlikely – I can hardly believe it myself to be honest – but I’ve even got myself stuck in the “I don’t have time to explain it all and only I know what’s going on and honestly it’s just easier if I just crack on and get things done myself” rut in the not-too-distant past. I’ve even managed to convince myself that it’s an act of service for other people, when it’s actually more like an act of performative martyrdom.
And we’ve all seen plenty of those, right?
“No honestly it’s fine. I’ll do it. You don’t need the hassle” etc etc.
So there are a number of things to take from all this, I guess. [Probably three in total, because things tend to end up in threes in these situations, don’t you find? I’ll start with the first and go from there, and we can see at the end if it was three in total after all. Exciting eh?!]
- The letting go is a crucial part of learning. Whether we like it or not, failure is always the best way to learn. Retracing your steps till you know. Have no fear, your wounds will heal. [If you’re sitting there thinking “that sounds strangely familiar”, then a) well done you, and b) yes I have just accidentally on purpose drifted into the lyrics of the song “Failure” by the Norwegian folk-pop duo Kings of Convenience off their 2001 album “Quiet Is The New Loud”. If you haven’t you definitely should – Spotify link here. You are, as ever, most welcome.]
- If you don’t give people the space for that learning and growth, they will never learn and grow. And you, my friend, will be stuck doing the stuff that they would have learnt to do, if you had let go. Which means you can’t do the other stuff that you want to do so you too can learn and grow.
- No matter how experienced you are, the letting go never gets more comfortable, nor less important. In fact, the letting go actually protects you, by allowing perfectly capable others to support you. [It did end being three. I kind of knew it would be, didn’t you?]
That’s what I’ve rediscovered in recent months, like a comfy old jumper that’s fallen to the back of the palatial walk-in wardrobe in the East wing of your country retreat [I’m guessing here, but pretty confident that because you have the foresight and insight to be reading this you’re almost certainly one of the leading lights in your line of work. Or bloody should be, am I right?], that super soft woollen number which of course you haven’t worn for a while, but when you find it you know how comfy it’s going to feel as soon as you pull if over your head and ease your arms through the arm holes [is that the phrase for that part of a jumper? Doesn’t sound quite right, does it?] and so simultaneously you’re a bit annoyed you’d forgotten about it, but more than that you’re excited about its rediscovery and the familiar warmth to come [Sleeves! Of course, knew it’d come back to me eventually].
Funny how the fact that, despite knowing the right way to do all this stuff, you can so easily slip back into old, bad habits you know didn’t help last time.
Funny how you need to remember it all and sometimes learn it all again.
Funny how no matter how many times you’ve done it, it never gets much easier.
[Exactly not like riding a bike, come to think of it…]
And then… when you get it right… wow doesn’t it just feel great? Helping someone else to learn and grow has to be whole point of getting all the experience if you ask me. Passing on your knowledge and [dare I say it?] wisdom [yes I bloody dare!] and then getting to the point where you know and they know the time is now…
And once you’re there, you realise the letting go isn’t the end of the story; it’s the prologue for everything to come.
The Bartlett Bubble 