Climbing Down the Hole

The hardest thing I learned at Samaritans wasn't what I expected.

I thought it would be staying calm when someone was in crisis. But it was actually suppressing my urge to fix.

When someone calls, you're dropped into the middle of their situation, and you feel a pull toward problem-solving immediately: What happened? What can I do? How can I help?

But Samaritans tells you to resist it.

There's an image they use in training. You imagine the caller is at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. Their friends and family are up at the surface, desperately throwing down ropes, shining torches, calling out instructions. Our role as a Samaritan is to climb down into the hole and sit beside them.

You don't fix or advise down there. You don't get caught up in what happened or what will happen. You're just there with them, in the darkness, being present in the not-knowing.

The poet Keats called this "negative capability" — the capacity to stay in uncertainty without reaching for resolution. He believed it opened up something which certainty closed off.

It turns out it's one of the foundations of good coaching. And, I think, good leadership too.

Most leadership culture seems allergic to the idea of negative capability. It often seems like one of the worst things a leader can say is "I don't know". Uncertainty is something that needs to be resolved quickly.

I'm sure we've all been in meetings where challenging topics are "taken offline", never to be discussed again. Or where leaders acknowledge difficult subjects but rush straight to next steps and action plans.

Negative capability is about resisting the urge to resolve quickly. It's the capacity to climb down the hole, and stay in the discomfort, anxiety and doubt of not-knowing.

It isn't about the leader being lost in the uncertainty, but being able to hold it steady enough for others to think.