Transparency is Everything.

 

This month's blog is about transparency.  In approaching this subject which touches on life, HR and relationships, I'll be sharing a story which I have never told publicly. It is the story about when I first found out I was going to lose all of my vision. 

So, let’s go back to the mid 1970's when I was fourteen years old. Man, I miss this era. I still think the best music came out of the 70's with performers like Simon and Garfunkel, the Eagles, James Taylor, Elton John, Boston and John Denver all at their best. But of course, every generation thinks the music they were listening to in their teens is the best!  

At fourteen, I had been experiencing some vision trouble since I was about twelve. I was wearing thick bifocal glasses, both to see up close, as well as to see things far away. But, in hindsight, I didn't realize the implications, strange as that seems, or perhaps the first instance of a lack of transparency in the world around me? I was regularly seeing doctors who checked me out, murmured things to either themselves or a colleague standing by, but never to me directly. Obviously, I knew things weren't the same anymore. I gave up riding my bike, but I still didn't use any kind of mobility device like a cane or a guide dog. Everything else seemed to be pretty "normal" – I watched TV, read books, watched movies and I hung out with friends, but I guess things were far from "normal". 

Then one day I was at an ophthalmology appointment at Sick Children's Hospital in Toronto.  I was sitting in the waiting room. Beside me was my father and on the other side was an intervener from the Toronto School Board.  Another great thing about the 70's is people started waking up to the fact that if you lost your vision, you didn't automatically have to go to a school for the blind. At that time the Toronto School Board was piloting a program where they left kids in the so-called "regular" school system, supported by in-class interveners. 

So, there the three of us were, waiting in silence.  I think we had already been in to see a doctor, or doctors, and now were waiting to go back in again.  Suddenly the intervener leaned across me and said to my father, "I think it is time we taught Peter braille". Shock. Surprise. Devastation. "That means I am really going blind" I realized for the first time. "And why are they not talking to me about this." 

Now, many years later, I am not sure what about that situation was worse -- finding out the diagnosis itself or finding out that way.  I think it is the latter, actually finding out through a conversation that took place, literally in my presence, inches from me, that I was not part of.

I promised that this blog would be about transparency. And there you have it. There was not much of that going on at the time I figure.  I don't even know, in fact, how transparent the doctors were with my parents. I assume they told them the truth, but I think even 44 years later the medical community still protects information and tries to shelter patients from a diagnosis. While writing this blog, I did some research about patient-centred care. One article I came across said that as early as 1948 the World Health Organization defined health as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity".   However, when I looked into patient-centred health care in 2012 more than 2,000 articles turned up on the subject, compared to 58 articles on the same topic in 1990, and a mere 20 articles in 1980, so I am going to conclude that the idea of person-centred health care really hadn't made it onto the map yet in 1975. 

Today, I still wonder if my diagnosis had been approached differently if anything would have changed.  Probably not, but that day still marks my memory because it was like I ceased to exist during one of the most fundamental turning points of my life. 

I value transparency, not just because of incidences like that, but because I think it is one of the most important, and sometimes most difficult, values to model. Take transparency of one's self. It is often the most difficult to be honest to one's self; however, if you are dealing with people, in a work or any kind of relationship setting, transparency is everything.  How can you do performance reviews, reveal the latest change in the company mandate, or let people know what their compensation and terms and conditions are without being transparent? Sure, there are limits to everything, maybe national security?  But short of that, practicing transparency yields credibility and honesty. WE are our words, and we are what we do. Looking back at this lesson in transparency from my teens, I don't blame the people who were there, my father and that school board intervener.  I think they were just as much "in the dark" as I was. But I'd like to know things have changed since then, that parents deal with their children in a more transparent manner. That the medical profession has become more person-centred, and that our leadership practices have at their core transparency as part of their fundamental values. 

In an October 2018 Forbes Magazine article called "10 Things Transparency Can Do For Your Company" contributor William Craig writes, "In more than one study, employees indicated that company transparency was the number-one factor in determining their workplace happiness. And why not? Transparency fosters trust, and trust is important for the health of every relationship under the sun."

Learning that I would eventually lose my sight, and how I received the news was a long time ago, but the memory has never left me.  Still, I persist. I ran my first full marathon in Victoria last month and qualified to run Boston in 2021. While Johanna could not be in Victoria to guide me she was the one who prepared me.  We had been training together every week, since June. As we ran we smashed the barriers of distance, steadily increasing our mileage from 15k, to 24k, to 32k on the road to 42k. When we run, we talk.  We share ideas and above all we are incredibly transparent with each other. To quote Henry David Thoreau "Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds".