My son Traylor is just one of the 3.7 million high seniors figuring out what next year holds.
When you’re 18 years old, life experiences are limited and ideas of what’s possible fewer. Looking at post-high school choices like college? Those options are likely defined in part by what’s discussed around the kitchen table or highlighted by college counselors and friends at school.
And even a kid like Traylor – well educated professional parents, a great high school with strong college advisory programs, worldly traveled – some ideas, like schooling in Canada or Europe, community colleges or a gap year – are not things that necessarily bubble to the surface.
It’s similar at times with people at work. The person with great talent and potential may never have the thought that they could do something different from what they’re doing; vision narrowed by limited experiences and narrow expectations. You simply don’t know what you don’t know. Ignorance, not stupidity.
The Hudson Institute – aka “the Harvard of Coaching” – where I trained, has a methodology termed “coaching from slightly behind.” The idea is to help clients surface their inner resourcefulness to tackle the issues and opportunities at hand.
It’s a terrific, effective approach that usually works really well with durable outcomes. Except when it doesn’t. Some people, just like many high school seniors, have a limited idea of the options and choices around them. Think, for example, of someone who never had been exposed to ice cream flavors beyond vanilla.
The remedy is to “shine a light” on those unexplored options, a way of generating thoughts not apparent to someone. In effect supporting new choices generated by seeing the unseeable, exploring the unknown.
My very accomplished friend Gail Covington, a Harvard B-School grad, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and current private wealth advisor at Morgan Stanley, a wife and a mother to two great kids, tells a story of enrolling at Williams College, one of the most competitive liberal arts colleges in America. My recollection is Gail said something like “I had to do it all. It wasn’t something that was on the radar.” Gail was fortunate in that she uncovered Williams on her own. Many high schoolers aren’t that smart, perseverant or lucky.
For many of us, not knowing what we don’t know, is like the P. J. O’Rourke quote: “There is no horizon in Toledo. There are too many trees.”
Or, to quote Walter Dean Myers, “As a kid I didn’t see black cowboys on the screen. What that said to me was that there were things I couldn’t do or be because of my color. What we see others like us do gives us permission to expand our own horizons.”
The role of a parent like me and people managers everywhere, is to help expand the choices of those with whom you work or love so that they can be their best.
Advice? Shine that light, surface those unexplored options, and broaden those horizons.
Life Back West is an occasional set of writings focused on ways people, teams and organizations can be both more effective (doing the right thing) and more efficient (doing the right thing well). More about my 30+ years of work coaching execs, start up and leadership teams can be found at the “About J. Mike Smith and Back West, Inc.” sidebar at the Back West blog. Now welcoming new and known clients.