Who Answers to You
The point is to look at the power you actually hold over other people and give one piece of it back — because a person is never an archon, and a person can be doing its work this morning, at this address, for this wage.
Use this if you set the metric, sign the roster, hold the lease, approve the leave, control the money, write the reference, hold the visa, or decide the care of someone who cannot decide it themselves. An hour, something to write on, and the willingness to be told something.
iThe list. Write the names of the people who cannot refuse you. Not the people who would find it awkward — the ones for whom a no costs the wage, the shift, the roof, the reference, the visa, the bed, the hours of care. If the list is empty, check it against who is not in the room when the decision is made.
Beside each name write what their refusal would actually cost them. In money, in weeks, in housing. Do not write "their comfort."
iiThe three questions. For one of those people, answer these in writing, in their situation and not yours.
Can they say no, and is there a place where the no is recorded?
What does refusing cost, and who pays it?
Who owns the somewhere else they would go instead?
If you own the somewhere else, you cannot read their agreement as consent. Sincerity does not redistribute that. Write down what you have been reading as agreement.
iiiThe thing you never had to explain. Find one decision you made that nobody required you to justify. The rule, the rate, the schedule, the exception you made once and kept. Write down why, honestly, including the part that was convenience.
ivAsk. Ask one person on the list what it is like to be on the other side of a decision you make. Ask it plainly and do not supply the answer. Then be quiet for as long as they talk. Do not explain the constraints you were under. Write down what they said, in their words, not your summary of it.
You do not get to do this more than once with the same person unless they offer. Asking is also a thing they cannot easily refuse.
vGive one thing away. Not a gesture — a piece of the power itself, this week, with a date. Money moved to where the decision was pinching. A rule you drop. Information they did not have and now do. A veto handed to the person the decision lands on. A published rate. The roster made before the favors rather than after.
Write what you gave and what it would take to take it back. That last sentence is the honest one, and you will know the giving was real if writing it is uncomfortable.
The crown comes off the head and sits in the hand, and it is still in your hand. Taking it up to act is the job. Putting it down before one decision becomes a theory of everyone in the room is also the job.
Then go and do the ordinary part of the work: the roster, the invoice, the phone call. Nobody is watching this and nothing about it makes you good.