All on the table

Liz Lopatto once memorably wrote that Wall Street is “what happens when you mix money with feelings.” I want to build on that and posit that perhaps money is what happens when you mix money with feelings. That the shame and fear, hopes and dreams, rage and worry that accompany any discussion of money are at least as meaningful a framework for understanding it as the numbers on a balance sheet. That, in any conversation about money, we are rightfully defensive, hypervigilant, attentive in the way the hare pays attention to the fox.

I say this because I want to talk about money here—specifically, about the role that money plays in my own coaching practice. And I want to do so directly, as is my nature, but also because I think we do ourselves a disservice when we presume that all the feelings we have about money mean we must only talk about it sideways. As my clients have often heard from me, strong feelings demand our attention, not our immediate relief.

Coming to the table

It is no great secret that every coaching engagement I have includes, at the beginning, a conversation about money. But one of the things that is unique about this particular kind of conversation, relative to most of the financial transactions we take part in day-to-day, is that it is unmediated: that is, it is a direct exchange between two human beings. There is no institution, no company, no government in the mix. The only other experience I have like it is buying vegetables from my local small farm. I know the names and faces of the people who grow my food, know that their barn was damaged in a big summer storm, that the first winter squashes are almost ready for harvest. I’ve shared my tips for the best gazpacho, commiserated about the heat. It is a fundamentally different experience to negotiate an exchange of funds with a living, breathing, person versus with a mindless, unconscious organization. It’s more vulnerable and personal, and there’s more on the table than just cash.

A brief aside is in order. One of the concepts that I borrow from narrative coaching is the notion of the “field.” The field is the energetic, creative space that opens up between two people in dialogue—if you pay attention to it, you will notice that it often can be said to have a temperature, a color, a texture. The field is part of what makes a dialogue more than just an exchange of information: it’s a spark, a connection, the interaction of two waves colliding, jostling, joining. The thing that’s critical to remember about the field is that it is co-created by the people talking—it cannot be the work of one. When I talk to someone about their work, they bring to the field their stories, fears, hopes, dreams, their frustration and anger, their rage, their desire, their good humor and their bad moods both. I bring a curious and caring attention, my own depth of experience, stories collected from hundreds of conversations with workers of all stripes, nearly two decades of thinking and writing about work, and a deep well of equanimity and patience. Between us, something new emerges—something that could only come into being at that moment, not the sum of what we’ve arrived with but the product of it. It’s as if we’ve arranged to meet in the forest, they with an armful of kindling, me with my flint, and together we are both warmed by the fire.

All together

When I embarked on this practice, I spent a lot of time interrogating my own relationship to work. I knew I couldn’t be present for my clients in the way they needed me to be without first taking my own inventory. That effort brought to the surface a lot of programming and assumptions, a lot of just-so stories that had quietly guided my actions with little attention from me. I knew that pursuing this practice would require me to look hard at all of that, to attend to my own complicated feelings and stories about work—and that was a large part of what drew me to it. What I didn’t know, what I’m grateful to have learned, is that walking alongside my clients as they attend to their own stories is as healing for me as it is for them. Every time I witness someone unpack their own choices, acknowledge their needs, become aware of the loose threads in their narratives, the opportunities to re-story their relationship to work—my own ability to do the same is strengthened.

This is, then, a reciprocal relationship, one in which each of us invests time, energy, attention, and resources, and in which we grow in each other’s company. The fact that money changes hands in the process does not diminish that reciprocity: rather, because we are able to interact directly and candidly, the money becomes just one part of the exchange rather than the whole deal. But that reciprocity also demands a different way of thinking and talking about money than we are used to, a break from the conventional wisdom that is so steeped in scarcity and ill-use. I knew when it came to pricing my services that the old ways were not equipped to the task. And so I started to work with a sliding scale model, aiming to meet my clients where they were, to make space for that reciprocity to bloom. I did so iteratively, experimentally, learning with my clients—for there is no other way to learn—what makes sense for both of us, how to have a conversation about money that isn’t alienating or fearful, that leaves neither of us worried about our well-being, but which, instead, allows us each to thrive in interdependence. And I’m now talking about that in the open because I want to help shed the shame and stigma too often associated with these kinds of exchanges; I want to hold space for a more mature and equitable way of showing up for each other. I want to bring to this conversation as much solidarity as the circumstances permit.

I want the financial part of my engagements to be as much a wedge for building stronger, more resilient, more generative and humane relationships as is every conversation that follows. I want the way I work with my clients to be a laboratory for better ways of working with each other, ways that are cooperative and just and sustainable. I want us to recognize that while a great many workplaces subject us to burnout and exploitation and abuse, our desire to do good work—work that contributes to our collective thriving, that enables us to explore and hone our unique gifts, that remakes the world—is also innate, and powerful, and too important to give up without a fight.

These are ambitious desires. They represent a chipping away at the alienation and dissociation that capitalism foments; they reject the isolation and competitiveness we are trained for, but which leaves us hollow. But damn if now isn’t the time to chip away! We live in uncertain and dangerous times, in the throes of a climate crisis, of ongoing genocide, of a fascism that is already here if not yet evenly distributed. It is, of course, a great risk to imagine and reach for brighter futures. But it’s an even greater risk not to. And we don’t have to risk anything alone.