Kyle is a huge fan of clarity. Somehow, according to him, this has forced him into being something of a lone wolf.
“I have no time for drama in my life...” he says.
Well, that escalated quickly.
But Kyle takes some time to unpack what at the face of it sounds like a pretty bleak observation about his general life philosophy and its effect on his social life.
“The thing is, I call a spade a spade so I don’t like to cut corners or prettify things. But I also hate arguing and confrontation in general. So instead of creating or encouraging conflict, I tend to just back away from it. Which means that yeah, there’s very few people I end up hanging out with for that long before the drama inevitably sets in…”
But this doesn’t mean he’s a surly or forbidding presence. Far from it. A family man through and through, Kyle is proud to get up each day and meet new challenges that will ensure his nearest and dearest can enjoy financial security, while his career continues on an upward trajectory.
“I go through life analysing every opportunity that comes along, looking for the work-related opportunities that will help me grow,” he says, but this isn’t just a self-centered pursuit for Kyle. He’s fully aware of the reality that success can rarely come about solo.
“Your success is determined by the success of others. That’s why teamwork is so essential.” A noble thought, but also something of a contradiction, given Kyle’s cautious social dynamics? Again, this is where the vaunted concept of clarity steps in to resolve matters.
“Yes, so, the dynamics of teamwork are exactly why I value clarity. Knowing what your work needs, and knowing how to express this to your team-mates is an essential first step towards understanding and collaboration.”
But this isn’t just a convenient truism for Kyle: it’s a hard-learned lesson that has its origins in both his school days and the early stages of his career.
“Even when I was in Sixth Form, it rankled me a bit that I was expected to study subjects I have very little interest in, when I wanted to do was IT! I’ve matured a lot since then, and I now acknowledge that being more interested in subjects like History, English Literature and Systems of Knowledge would have helped my creativity and overall development, but at the time I was quite single-minded,” Kyle admits.
When he joined the workforce, the need for clarity was made even more urgent, as he often found himself having to mediate between two worlds. “Working in the IT department meant I often found myself being the middleman between us and the supplier. This focused my mind on how best to communicate what we do in IT in layman’s terms.”
These were the professional realities that helped Kyle carry over the virtues of clarity into his personal life too. But the office is a place of fellow human beings too, with all of their preoccupations, flaws and vanities. This is where the private and professional become intertwined for Kyle, with clarity as the ever-present watchword.
“What I also noticed throughout my career is the instance of particular individuals… let’s just say they’re people who love to impress, and to appear clever. So they’ll use fancy, confusing language on purpose, just to elevate themselves in the eyes of others. I don’t think this is right, or helpful to the overall enterprise of a project, or business.” Intead, Kyle strongly believes in cutting through such noise, and communicating a clear message to your team. Really and truly, he takes a scientific approach: clarity is a way to ‘x-ray’ through unknowns and uncertainties and put everyone on the same page.
“It’s a point of humbleness and maturity, really,” Kyle says. “When you’re a kid, you think you know it all, but that’s of course not the case. Now I know that if I’m going to be working on or with something, I need to fully understand it. Again, I take a methodical, logical approach to all of this: I parse what I need from it, figure out what I absolutely must understand, and take it from there.”
Once again, Kyle is convinced that building solid relationships buttressed by respect and clear communication is the way to go.
“We need our clients to trust us to build their product and help them commercialise it. For that to happen, you really need to cultivate a strong sense of trust, which survives in the long term.” Kyle illustrates how this would pan out with a simple, relatable example.
“I love my car. Now, when I take it to a mechanic, he’ll tell me that he’ll take good care of it for me. And I want to be able to believe him, but he can only win that trust through a good professional relationship – by making sure he delivers the results effectively and on time. It’s the same with us and our clients. You are building a relationship, and it’s a delicate process that needs to be tackled with sensitivity, tact and intelligence.”
Neither can one go it alone.
“If you’re going to develop a complex product that delivers what your customer wants and makes a real impact on the market, you need a team behind you. I can’t just wake up in the morning and dream up a game-changing healthcare product, and get up off my bed and start to develop it all by myself. I need a team. People of different talents and capacities whom I can trust and who will help me take the project to fruition.”
And that’s what forms the backbone of Kyle’s approach to the working life.
“We need to be clear for all of us move forward in unison. This is why clarity is crucial for all partners to collaborate in a harmonious way.”
Maybe he’s not such a lone wolf after all.