Audience of one.

How spotlighting a single individual can make everyone feel seen.

Last week I attended my son’s graduation from the University of Michigan. Provost Laurie McCauley gave a speech I will long remember.

She said that she usually crafts her remarks to address the entire class, but that this year she decided to address one student whose name, gender and major she didn’t know. The student in question she knew solely by their Reddit handle — Previous_Wheel2075 — and by a recent comment they had posted that read:

“Has anyone sat by themselves at UMich commencement? I’m a bit anxious about it and was hoping to get some reassurance that I won’t look and feel like a complete failure socially.”

Provost McCauley acknowledged that only one person in the entire Big House knew the identity of Previous Wheel: Wheel themselves. This got a chuckle. Then McCauley made a brilliant pivot from anonymity to opportunity. “In the true Michigan spirit, graduates, can I ask you to take this moment to say hello to the person next to you?”

What happened next could easily be a scene from a movie: the entire stadium erupted in applause, followed by a flurry of students shaking hands and smiling.

Even typing this now I feel a swell of emotion. It goes back to elementary school lunch tables, buses and sports teams where everyone at one time or another has felt left out.

And by focusing on one student, Provost McCauley made every single person in that Big House — 70,000 students, faculty, parents, grandparents, siblings and more — feel that the world was a slightly friendlier place. If that’s not the definition of leadership, I don’t know what is.

I guarantee you there’s a Previous Wheel at your company, at your church or temple, in your neighborhood, at your gym, in your grocery checkout line. When I first moved to Napa during my divorce, an older gentleman at my new yoga studio remembered me and greeted me by saying “Katherine with a K, I hoped you’d come back!” That sweet welcome was like a love lozenge that I tucked in my cheek and savored through some dark months.

So as you rush about your day today, maybe save an extra ten seconds to nod hello, to smile, to actually see the people you cross paths with. Just in case it matters, which it most certainly will.

Until next time, remember that creativity knows no bounds.