A coaching client of mine and I were discussing this question the other day. He’s about to begin a new role with a rapidly expanding company. He’s very well suited for the job and the company but there will be taking on responsibilities that are clearly out of his comfort zone. He suggested that he’ll need to build up his confidence first before he’d be able to exercise some courage as the big initiatives and decisions started rolling in.
Nope, I countered, I’ll have to respectfully disagree with you on that one. Courage precedes confidence. My client gave me one of his most quizzical looks so I dove right in with an explanation: All of us possess an ‘expertise stack’ of complimentary skills, work habits and talents. They’re the reason why we earned the accolades that turned into positive performance reviews that turned into promotions that turned into the recruiter’s call and now, the new job. By playing it safe and sticking with our expertise stack, we’ll probably do ‘okay’ and we might even do very well. But I believe we’ll never truly demonstrate our very best abilities and our very best potential to our new employer. Sticking with our ‘known knowns’ doesn’t take courage and doesn’t build out our expertise stack. It’s a recipe for stasis and stagnation and mental unemployment (typically followed by the other type of unemployment).
We’ll need to exercise courage first if we’re going to reach and surpass our potential. We’ll have to risk stumbles — and fear — and skeptical looks from our new colleagues — and more fear — and possibly a few failed attempts — and even more fear. We’ll somehow learn to co-exist with the fear and some of us will even learn to dance with the fear. Our inborn adaptive nature will kick in and what used to require courage will now only require confidence.
And then, if we keep showing up, and we keep taking risks, and we continue to move outside of our expertise stack then the next amazing challenge will eventually present itself. And by then we’ll have developed our ‘courage muscles’ and we’ll be able to open the box, take out the dice (or remote controllers!) and start playing the game all over again.
If you’d like to discuss how you can accelerate your career growth by playing a bigger and better game, I’d be happy to schedule an introductory conversation.