There are some movies that shape our lives. To me, Jerry Maguire is one of them.
I didn’t watch it when it came out in 1996, despite the huge success. Still, I would say fourteen or fifteen years later, I was on a long-distance flight, and the airline was offering this movie. The other choices were not that good, so I was curious and went for it. One of those tiny screens on the back of the seat in front of you. Not exactly the perfect setting for a revelation.
I never thought it would become one of my favorite movies. The plot, the story, the redemption, the main character shouting in the car Tom Petty’s Free Falling.. all of it is good. But it became my favorite movie for just one line from Tom Cruise, who plays a very famous sports agent and is dealing with a typical prima donna NFL player. During a tough dialogue with the athlete (interpreted by Cuba Gooding Jr.) he says, “Help me help you“. He shouts it, actually, like a man at the end of his rope, with one true thing left to say.
I always quote Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire (you know, credit is due when it’s due), but it became undeniably a trademark of my activity. If you are a consultant, but also a friend, or a lover, and you intend to help someone, sometimes it is not easy if the person doesn’t give you all the information or is not collaborative. Once you realize that you want to help them and that they want to be helped (which is not a given), they have to help you. It is a kind of combo activity. You realize that sometimes it is a team effort. Healing someone has always been one of my obsessions.
Two things I know.
First: Only the person can heal herself. Thinking you can do it for her is just your ego walking and talking. Been there, done that.
Second, if the person wants to be healed, they have to put you in the position of helping them. Now, that can be anything: a relationship, implementing AI software in a company, negotiating with a company. Anything.
How many times have I seen it.
The client who shares half of the numbers.
The company that gives you no data and no time with its people.
The friend who asks for advice at dinner and has already decided everything.
The partner who wants the relationship to change and will not say what hurts.
All want the magic, but they all keep the door closed.
It took me years to stop taking it personally. People protect their problems. A problem you have carried for years becomes furniture: you know exactly where it is, and you can walk around it in the dark. Help means somebody comes into your house and moves your furniture. Of course you resist. Even when the furniture is blocking the door.
I did it too, by the way. Every time somebody tried to help me and I answered that everything was fine, I was keeping my door closed like everybody else. Knowing the line does not make you immune to it.
So now, before any project, any negotiation, any attempt to fix anything, I check one thing first. Not the budget, not the timeline. I check if the person is ready to help me help them. If they answer the uncomfortable questions, if they share the ugly numbers, if they do their part between one meeting and the next, then everything becomes possible: slower or faster, but possible. If they don’t, I pass, with no hard feelings. You can’t want something for somebody more than they want it for themselves.
Doctors know this. Teachers know this. Anyone who has tried to drag a friend out of a bad relationship knows this. The door only opens from the inside.
Tom Cruise said it in four words, and I have been repeating them ever since.
Help me help you.
