A new coaching client wanted a promotion.
“I’ve gotten promoted every year,” said my client, a software engineer at a large tech company. “Being promoted is how I know I’m successful.”
I looked at him worriedly.
“I expect you’re going to run out of runway,” I told him. “One of these years you’re not going to get promoted, and then what? You’re a failure?”
My client nodded. “I don’t know how I can keep this up,” he agreed. “I’m not sure how much harder I can work.”
“Let’s talk about the difference between career goals and outcomes,” I said, showing him my copy of the 2011 best-seller “Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization,” by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright.
“A goal is off in the future, so, to some people, it implies a failure in the present,” the authors write. “’When we achieve the goal, we will have stopped failing’ is how many people relate to the goal-setting process.” The authors were writing about organizational goals, but the distinction applies to career management, as well.
“An outcome, by contrast, is a present state of success that morphs into an even bigger victory over time,” they write.
I looked at my client, an earnest young man with a ready smile and friendly, outgoing nature. He looks about 10 years younger than he is. “Why do you want to be promoted every year?” I ask him.
“I want money and power,” he said.
“Yeah, me too,” I laughed. “Why do you want money and power?”
“Because then I’m in a better position to help people,” he replied.
“Let’s turn this around,” I suggested. “What if you’re already successful? After all, you have successfully found work that you love and excel at; you get paid to work on interesting problems; you’ve built friendships in a new city; you’ve found a partner you hope to spend the rest of your life with.
“What if success weren’t something that was going to happen sometime in the future? What if you’re already there?” I asked him.
He looked a bit dumbstruck.
“Earning that promotion is an outcome of that success, rather than the goal itself,” I suggested.
We talked about how his goals, in this reframing, had to do with solving increasingly difficult and complex technical problems that help people — the “bigger victory” that the “Tribal Leadership” authors describe. He will fight for that promotion — and we developed a clear plan to get there — but it won’t define success for him.
“Goals … have diminishing returns as people become unwilling to spend their careers in a state of failure, scratching toward success,” write the authors of “Tribal Leadership.”
This software engineer with the big, open smile isn’t scratching toward success. He’s already there.
First published in The Seattle Times. Read my archive of Seattle Times Explore columns.
