Every Calling

"Every calling is great when greatly pursued."   - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

I love this Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. quote because it articulates a key theme in my mentoring work and the mentoring work of many others. While mentees often seek advice about particular industries or specific skills, I have found that just as often mentees seek the confidence (or perhaps the permission) to make difficult decisions about the path they find themselves on. Sometimes that decision is about whether to pursue something they love despite the lack of certain benefits, particularly in terms of compensation. In other cases, mentees wonder aloud if the road to success they've already paved was worth the sacrifices along the way and is now time for a different course?

I'll share a conversation I had with a mentee in the midst of a career crisis. This person, let's call him Joe, believed that he had reached his maximum potential as an individual contributor. Joe was contemplating, with trepidation, switching to a management role. Joe no longer saw neither greatness nor joy in his current job. But Joe wasn't looking forward to leading a team either. Becoming a manager, while a riskier and somewhat unpleasant option for him, would at the very least offer a bump up in salary. 

After Joe finished describing his dilemma I started asking questions. My curiosity centered on the underlying motivation for moving towards leadership and away from his current role. I wanted to understand whether this dilemma was arrived at by choice, by boredom, by financial pressure, by false expectations or by something else. As it turned out, the root cause was that Joe didn't feel like his contributions to the company were being noticed. He thought that by occupying a managerial role it would magically get him some deserved recognition. Joe believed that being in a position of power was the best way for him to finally be recognized and rewarded.

Over the next several months we had ongoing conversations on this topic. I led those conversations down two parallel tracks: The first track was based on finding fulfillment in what he was already doing. I guided him to shift his focus to the joys of a job well done independent of what others thought. The second track focused on improving his communication and networking skills. I observed that these were lacking in Joe as these are precisely the types of skills that helps get one 'noticed'. Instead of switching to a different position in the future, we worked on improving skills and pursuing the greatness that the mentee already had within him today. A year later Joe confided that becoming a manger would have been one of the biggest career mistakes he could ever have made. 

Which bring us to the quote above that inspired this post. One of the roles of a mentor is to encourage/remind/inspire their mentees to recognize that any calling including the one they are currently following (as long as it's not illegal, unethical or immoral of course) can be great if pursued and done greatly. And I believe that the pursuit of greatness is in everyone's capacity.

I'll end with another quote that is meaningful to me. It is the basis of being an effective mentor:

“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.”       - Mark Twain