One of the questions I get all the time as a coach is, “Is this role I want realistic?” My instinctive response is almost always a shrug and a response of “Why not? Unless you tell me you want to be an NBA player, anything is possible.”1
Who am I to tell you you can’t do something? I don’t know what kind of hustle and spirit you have inside you. Over and over again, in the course of human history, we’ve seen people do the seemingly impossible. From physical feats of endurance to astounding comebacks in sports to tremendous pressure under duress in the harshest conditions possible, it is folly to underestimate a human’s ability to accomplish something that they put their mind to.
In almost all of the jobs I’ve ever had, I’ve been the first person in that role. In many of those, the role was created for me. The roles literally didn’t exist before me. If I was asking the same question before I took any of those roles, no one in their right mind would say what I was looking for was realistic. And yet…
There was one commonality between all those roles that were created for me: I made sure someone with decision-making power understood the value I could bring to the firm.
I’m not trying to be Pollyanna about this. There are harder paths and there are easier paths for people to take in their career. But I’m not going to tell someone it’s not realistic.
I believe strongly in the sense of possibility. That means I believe strongly in the potential of those that I work with. It’s not my job to be the person that limits someone. Only they can do that. And, for their own sake, I hope they don’t.
Related: People similarly ask me “Should I do X job [usually something they don’t want to do] so that I can do Y job [usually something they want to do] later?” My question to them in response is almost always, “Why wait?” If you want to do Y now, try to go do Y. It may not be possible, but don’t limit yourself from finding out if you can.
And, perhaps more importantly, don’t do something now that you don’t really want to do just because you may need to for your next job. Do X job first if you really want to learn some skills that you’ll need for Y job later. But don’t do it because that’s what one person told you should do. Because for every person who did X job first and Y job second, I can show you another who never did X job and ended up in the same Y job. Life is too short to waste time on something that you don’t want to do.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
I may need to figure out a different “unrealistic option” as there were NBA players shorter than my 12-year-old son, including 5’3”-tall Muggsy Bogues, who played in the NBA for 14 years. My wife suggested King or Queen as the substitute for NBA player in the canonical example of an unrealistic role. Yes, primogeniture does have a way of getting in the way of anyone’s ability to be King or Queen. I’ll adjust my talk track from here on out.