Thursday. 18:50. The office empties out. Manolo is still at his desk. Laptop open. But he's not working. He's staring at the screen like someone looking out the window of a train going nowhere. The screensaver has been on for a while.
I walk past. Something stops me.
—Manolo, are you okay?
He turns. Blinks. As if the question had caught him without his armor on.
—Yes, yes. Finishing things up.
I don't push. Manolo doesn't open the door on the first knock.
The next day, in the kitchen:
—How are you doing, Manolo? Really.
—Fine. Swamped, you know.
"Swamped." The usual shield. If you're really busy, nobody asks any further. It's the perfect armor: it protects you from the conversation without raising suspicion.
—I asked how you are. Not how the project is going.
Silence. Coffee in hand. Eyes on the floor.
—Jose, do you know when the last time was that someone asked me that? How I am. Not the project. Not the report. Me.
Pause.
—I can't remember.
And there, in the kitchen, with a mediocre coffee and the microwave humming in the background, I see Manolo without the character. No notebook. No expensive pen. No slides.
—Manolo, and when was the last time you asked someone on your team?
Longer silence.
—I ask them things constantly.
—You ask them about the sprint. About the tickets. About the deadlines. That's not asking. That's auditing.
—It's my job.
—Part of your job. The other part is knowing how your people are. Not their performance. Them.
—Jose, that's their personal life. I don't pry.
—It's not prying. It's caring. And there's an abyss between the two.
—Did you know Laura has been coming in late for three months because her mother is sick?
—No.
—Did you know Marcos asked for a team change two weeks ago?
—Marcos? He hasn't said anything to me.
—Because you didn't ask him. And people don't tell you things you don't ask about. Especially if every time they open their mouth you steer the conversation back to the roadmap.
—But one-on-ones are for talking about work.
—Manolo, a one-on-one is not a progress interrogation. It's the only moment when someone on your team has your full attention. And you turn it into a Jira review with coffee.
—Asking about that stuff is soft.
—Brené Brown has spent twenty years researching this and lays it out in Dare to Lead: the toughest teams, the ones that perform under pressure, are the ones with leaders who ask. Not the ones who know. The ones who ask.
—Jose, I'm just not that kind of guy. I'm about results.
—No. You're the kind who confuses toughness with distance. And distance isn't professionalism. It's abandonment with office hours.
—That's strong.
—You know what's stronger? You've been managing people for fifteen years and you don't know how a single one of them is doing. And the worst part: you've spent fifteen years waiting for someone to ask you. And nobody does. Do you know why?
—Why?
—Because you never asked first. People give back what they receive. If you give distance, you get distance. Someone has to start. And that someone is you. Because you're the boss. And the boss asks first. If he doesn't, nobody does.
—And what if I ask and they tell me things I don't know how to handle?
—You don't have to handle anything. Just listen. Sometimes people don't want solutions. They want to know someone cares.
—And where do I start?
—Ask "how are you?". And when they say "fine," don't say "perfect" and move on to the next agenda item. Wait. Shut up. Three seconds. If they want to tell you something, they will. If not, at least they'll know the question was real.
—Three seconds.
—Three seconds, Manolo. It's the only thing separating a boss from a leader.
He gets up. Leaves the coffee on the counter.
—Thanks, Jose.
—For what?
—For asking.
He leaves. Slowly. No notebook. No pen.
And I'm left thinking that Manolo has spent fifteen years surrounded by people and completely alone. Because he built a wall of efficiency and "swamped" so high that nobody dared to look over it. And he never dared to look out.
The cheapest question in the world is "how are you?". And the most expensive one is never asking it.
Thanks for reading.