A few days ago, someone very important to me died. His name was Chris. And he was the best of us. My heart is still broken from losing a wonderful soul that helped so many people. I wanted to write about him and why he is so important to me as a human.

I first wanted to say that Chris’s contributions to knowledge are immense. He gave so much and his ways of thinking about schools and school leadership. Documenting this will be a near enough impossible job – very much like complexity would tell us, his influence has rippled beyond anything possible. I have had the immense privilege of working with him over the last 12 years on some of these ideas. They have formulated the very core of my academic identity. Frankly, if you have ever found anything I have done useful, you have also found Chris useful. There will be other spaces to more formally articulate how much his contributions to knowledge set a new bar – a level of theoretical depth and meaning rarely reached by many of his contemporaries, and through that finding deep and practical meaning for how we should lead.

In this piece, my focus is a desire to share my deep loss and grief for the human behind it. The human behind all this is one the very best humans I’ve ever met.

The great privilege of the last 12 years was how our work afforded me the opportunity to sit with him for so long. We talked. A lot. Often about everything and nothing. We’d move from the serious testing of ideas to the ridiculous and silly.  To our families and our lives. To the ideal palest of pale ales. We read each other’s work, always in the spirit of the sacrificial draft. We’d share exasperations at rejected drafts and project submissions, with the 48-hour rule being one of the best systems for dealing with disappointment that I’ve ever been taught. He shared his wisdom on family life, on navigating the sphere of academia and the general musings of two friends who very much enjoyed each other’s company.

He took me under his wing when I was a mid-20s, slightly broken, young father and PhD student still figuring out his path in the world. He carefully and cautiously guided me through some big decisions – personal and professional. He guided me through some of the typical moments of a young father (“you’re only as happy as your least happy child”), through my divorce and restabilising my life. He guided me on what roles to take, what opportunities to forge and how to focus on meaningful and deep endeavour as oppose to grandeur, popularity and quick wins.

His guidance, forged through the deep listening and capacity to see you and hold you as a whole human being, always led to a better answer. Sometimes, this guidance was hard to hear. But he never shyed away from it. This is how he cared and he was tenaciously courageous. He was never afraid of asking people to go deeper – to drive through assumptions and push people further then they thought possible for themselves.  He showed me the path in becoming a kind, compassionate man that could love his work and be brilliant for his family …to be in a place to do good work, with good people that could make a difference. 

I loved watching him. Conferences, conversations, and in his teaching of me and of others. No pride or ego worth a darn. A confidence yet humility which was, frankly, just beyond classy. He was passionate and to the point but never shy on detail or academic rigour. He would find the practical by going deep into the theory, and was never afraid to the hold the responsibility for explaining that depth so people could get it. He embodied balance – wisdom with practicality, simple yet profound, clarity with compassion, conviction with humility. His motive, in everything he did was his relentless belief in people, a desire to help other reach their potential and to be an active presence in doing so. The words passive and Chris do not go together.

His influence on me is pretty evident in my everyday. In the contributions we made to complexity theory and adult development – all of which I would not be able to engage in without Chris. All of which I am deeply, deeply grateful for as he showed me how to communicate these ideas to the world and gave me direction and knowledge to help. In how to take our work seriously but hold ourselves and others with kindness, humility, believing in others’ light and in good humour. If you’ve heard me talk about a sacrificial draft, the ‘sermon’ model or why I’ve asked you to ‘send it down the wire’, you’ll know why. If you’ve ever found me being the one to speak up the with awkward question. If you’ve ever heard me say to my son “do we need 48 seconds, 48 minutes or 48 hours to process this?”. It’s in my exploration of the palest of pale ales, It’s in why I look in the mirror and feel proud of the path I’m walking. In seeing Chris and the light he shone on the world and the people around him, I had a 12 year pupillage in become a good man. I’m not there yet, but he’s given me a great role model to follow.

I have many stories to share.  The time when I watched a younger group of colleagues in deep critique of his paper, totally unaware that Chris was there, at their table. He didn’t jump in, reveal his identity and get defensive. He just listened. The times he’d bite the bullet and ask me the awkward questions on behalf of the audience so he could push me ready for my viva. The time he put his arm round me after feeling shaky of a new group he introduced me to and said “I think you just so smart, Neil, I’m so proud of you”. The endless patience he showed – like the time I ‘flew off the handle’ because the 4^th rewrite of a chapter was not hitting the mark, and his understanding when I called 2 hours later with my tail between my legs apologising because he was right. The time he built fires in the garden with my son, and when he’d talk to my toddler of a daughter during supervisions. All which show every part of the person I’ve tried to describe, and more.

Over the last week, I know how fortunate I am that all this stays with me. That, having had some big and exciting thing happen, that I can still turn to the Chris inside my mind and interact with him and what he showed me. I can feel the guiding hand still pushing me along, in how I feel, think and behave to myself and others…when I look at the work we did and the work still to do…in the conversation I have with myself which, with Chris in the mix, became kinder to who I am and to hold myself with pride, humility, conviction and courage.

For a long time, I wasn’t sure how to describe Chris’s connection to me. When I would introduce Chris (first, he had to teach me how to say Emeritus as, turns out, the way I pronounced it made it sound like some form of medical examination!) I’d hesitate in saying my relationship with him.  PhD supervisor never covered it – we were closer than that and was only true for the first 6 years of knowing him. Mentor, sure. But he was showing me so much more than my professional repertoire…..he guiding me in becoming a better human and father. Collaborator, way too clinical and…frankly, I felt like I was learning so much, to say it was collaborative would grossly underestimate his unseen impact.

The other day I realised what phrase I should have been using all along. When someone asked how I was, I said I was struggling because my dearest and best friend died today. I know I told him this enough, but I also wish I could tell him one more time.

So, to my dearest and best of friends. I love you. Thank you for bringing me into a world and trusting me with your ideas.   Thank you for keeping me by your side, especially when we both found things tough. Thank you for showing me how to be a good friend, a good guide and, I hope, a good man. Keep a palest of pale ale waiting for me by the San Antonio river, I’ll keep ticking things over and I’ll keep finding a way of sending it all down the wire.