The Tells You Know
The Drift - Essay 11
A reflection of knowing the tells and living with that sight becomes its own kind of work.
A prelude to a show is how they described it to me.
“it’s like watching a poker player who doesn’t know they have a tell”
It wasn’t always this way.
There was a time when the work felt fine.
Not effortless, not perfect — just steady.
Good people. Shared goals. The small comfort of moving in the same direction. They noticed things even then, the loose ends and missed steps, but it didn’t feel heavy.
It felt like care. Like being someone who paid attention.
Then the slide began.
Not all at once. A trickle.
A deadline that slipped without consequence.
A promise made for show.
A problem everyone saw but no one named.
Leaders who looked away because looking meant acting.
They kept doing their part.
No extra thanks.
Just the quiet expectation that they would keep holding the line.
And somewhere in that slow erosion, their sight sharpened, their body sense heightened.
The big reveal.
The colleague who straightens their papers before bending the truth.
The slow sip of water before offering a polished excuse.
The tight smile that signals a deadline will drift.
The careful inhale before a story gets rewritten.
The pen aligned just so — the prelude to a performance.
They feel them before the words even land.
The bluff.
The dodge.
The shallow opting‑out.
The yes that means no.
And once the first sentence hits the air, the truth is immediate.
There it is.
The gap between what’s said and what’s real.
This is its own kind of drift.
Not away from the work, but away from the comfort of not knowing.
Away from the idea that integrity was a shared baseline.
And as they point out, “once you know the tells, you can’t unknow them. And living with that sight becomes its own kind of work.”
It made me pause.
Made me look at my own environment in a different kind of light.
And I can’t help wondering how many other rooms hold the same hushed signals and how many others have learned to read them too?
