It is always good to have friends who call you out on your BS.
A few years ago, one of my former bosses, who is also a client and good friend, sat me down and talked to me about my private client business.
He said: “You know, it is one thing for you to work with people like me who are already at the top and performing exceptionally well, but that is a cop-out for you.”
Confused, I asked him, “What do you mean?”
He want on to say that although I had helped him radically transform his career, my work couldn’t just be about training “Jedi’s,” my duty is to also serve those who are under-performing.
I rejected his idea outright.
I told him that my work was not built for mediocre performers, but what I really meant was I didn’t think they would be into my work. Back then I was of the view that the vast majority of people would never be into my work because they are simply not interested in striving.
Unlike my client who has pushed his career all the way to the top and still works around the clock to be the best he can be, I thought that most people simply are not built that way.
Instead, they are happy-enough with the careers they have built. Their careers are good-enough. Their lives are good-enough, and doing what it takes to get to the next level just isn’t for them.
As Jim Collins put it: “Good is the enemy of great…Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”
But he left me with a lot to noodle on, so I pulled out my crackers and I started cooking.
I’ve never understood people who phone it in every day. I am happy for them to do whatever they want, but I have zero interest in surrounding myself with that type of mediocrity.
But in stepping back I began to see it differently. Whereas in the past I had figured most people give up on anything more, I began to see that some of them aren’t mediocre by choice, they have just fallen into becoming that way.
Anyone on Wall Street has been exceptional at some point in their career. Just to make it to Wall Street they must have been an exceptional student. Just to survive and succeed in their early years they must have been exceptional.
But, over time, most of them simply “lost it.”
With a career and life that was good-enough, they lost the urge to keep pressing forward. With other priorities they believed were in conflict with their ambition, they made different choices. With every year they got further out from school their skills became more stagnant, and they simply became one of the herd that the world depends on to keep spinning.
The truth is that firms need more mediocre players than exceptional ones. Most of what happens on Wall Street requires a large number of bodies to just get things done. And so rather than helping everyone aspire to be the best they can be, firms simply let everyone duke it out and wait for the cream to rise to the top.
It works well for Wall Street. It works well for the many people who just want to keep moving along in the middle of the pack, but it works horribly for those who have become mediocre performers yet who dream of more.
After noodling on this for some time, I took up my client’s challenge and began working with a couple of mediocre performers.
What I learned was both shocking and beautiful to me.
Those two clients became some of my most dedicated clients. Not only were they willing to do the work but they were highly motivated towards taking their career to an entirely different level.
While you would never know it by looking at how their career had slowly petered out, as I got close to them, I could see, like a racehorse stuck at the starting gates, just below the surface there was this animal just dying to break free and unleash that potential that had always been there inside of them.
They knew that something had faded in their career and life and they wanted it back. They knew they had what it takes to compete at the top of heap, and they wanted to get there. Unfortunately, with no good mentors in their careers, and no one showing them the way, over many years they had given up on their dreams, they had lost hope, and accepted their career and life for what they expected it to be.
In working with them I came to see the Circle of Mediocrity (above) was different to what I expected and I learned it was easy to set the right people on a new trajectory.
I could see that the motivation was there. It just required new ways of thinking and belief to ignite it. And belief was there as long as they had the know-how. And effort was there, as long as they had the motivation, belief, and the know-how. And by showing them they could transform their career without giving up the rest of their life, they began to see new possibilities.
With that I discovered it was easy to transform a mediocre performer and help them get to the top of their game.
My client was right, it is an important part of my work to serve those who many others give up on. And what he hadn’t told me and I had never anticipated was just how much it would change me.
Nothing lights me up more than being able to see people change and become the most extraordinary version of them they can possibly be. To watch someone surprise himself or herself and achieve incredible results is the drug that fuels me.
To see how they walk different, talk different, interact with others with much more certainty and confidence, that is not just transforming for them, it is transforming for me.