Forget the Corporate Ladder — Winners Take Risks | Molly Graham | TED — Transcript

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1. 0:04There's a lot of pressure around what it takes to build a great career.
2. 0:09And it all comes back to this idea
3. 0:11that you're supposed to know what you want to do.
4. 0:14It’s an idea that I like to call “the stairs.”
5. 0:19Here's how the stairs go.
6. 0:22You show up in college,
7. 0:23and you're supposed to know what you want to major in.
8. 0:26That major is supposed to lead you to your first job,
9. 0:30and then you get another job,
10. 0:32and you get promoted and promoted and promoted forever.
11. 0:38The best part about the stairs is safety and security.
12. 0:43It feels like you know what you need to do to get ahead.
13. 0:47The worst part of the stairs is that it's like a weird video game
14. 0:51that you can get stuck inside of for years.
15. 0:54The stairs will make you feel
16. 0:56like your self-worth is tied to your title,
17. 1:00or your last performance rating, or your next promotion.
18. 1:05But the truth is that the stairs are an illusion.
19. 1:09These days, excellent careers are not built by excellent stair climbers.
20. 1:16Said differently,
21. 1:18one of the most important things you can get good at in your career
22. 1:21is taking risks.
23. 1:23Or, as I like to call it, jumping off cliffs.
24. 1:29Let me explain what I mean with a story.
25. 1:32When I was 25, I got offered a crazy job.
26. 1:36I had spent a couple of years climbing the stairs
27. 1:39in Human Resources at Facebook
28. 1:41when the leader of another department came to me and asked me to help him
29. 1:45start a new project,
30. 1:47doing something that I knew nothing about.
31. 1:50It was a long-term project,
32. 1:52it was risky, and a lot of people told me it would probably fail.
33. 1:57I was intrigued, but I was also scared.
34. 2:01So I talked to a bunch of different people,
35. 2:03and I have to admit, a lot of them told me not to take it.
36. 2:06But there was this little voice inside me that just kept saying,
37. 2:10"I wonder.
38. 2:12I wonder if I can be capable in this completely new environment."
39. 2:17So I took a risk and I took the job.
40. 2:21Now I'd like to say that what happened next
41. 2:23was that it was obviously a great decision and I was immediately successful.
42. 2:28But actually,
43. 2:30the first nine months on this project
44. 2:32felt a lot more like falling off of a very steep cliff.
45. 2:38I had gone from feeling competent and capable in HR
46. 2:43to feeling like an absolute idiot all the time.
47. 2:47I was sitting in rooms with brilliant people
48. 2:50asking very dumb questions.
49. 2:53Six months into this job,
50. 2:54I got the lowest performance rating of my entire life.
51. 2:58I had so many moments when all I wanted to do
52. 3:01was run back to the safety and security of the stairs.
53. 3:06But about nine months in, something interesting happened.
54. 3:10I had to lead a meeting.
55. 3:12It sounds simple, but it was a big meeting.
56. 3:14It was a complicated debate about a nuanced part of this project.
57. 3:19I was successful,
58. 3:21and I so vividly remember walking out of that meeting
59. 3:24feeling like myself again.
60. 3:27I had gone from feeling like a beginner in this new environment
61. 3:32to feeling confident and capable.
62. 3:35I spent another three years on this project,
63. 3:38learning and growing,
64. 3:40and on the other side of it, I was a completely different person.
65. 3:44I was offered jobs that no one would have offered me
66. 3:47if I had stayed in HR.
67. 3:49That's the thing about jumping off cliffs.
68. 3:53It doesn't just take you a couple flights up on the stairs.
69. 3:57It's like a weird elevator that takes you to a whole new place.
70. 4:01Cliff jumps teach you who you are and what you are capable of
71. 4:06in ways that the stairs can never.
72. 4:10To get good at jumping off cliffs, you have to get good at three things.
73. 4:16The first is actually jumping off the cliff.
74. 4:20(Laughter)
75. 4:22After many years of coaching people through career decisions,
76. 4:26I know that sometimes it is just not the right time to take a risk,
77. 4:33but I can also tell you that most people
78. 4:37do not stay stuck on the stairs out of necessity.
79. 4:41They stay there out of fear.
80. 4:46The trick is to learn to tell the difference
81. 4:48between the kind of fear that says,
82. 4:51"I'm scared I might run out of money,"
83. 4:53which you should actually listen to,
84. 4:55and the kind of fear that says,
85. 4:57"I'm scared I might fail,"
86. 5:00which you should take as a giant green flashing light to jump.
87. 5:08Cliff jumps teach you what you are capable of in spite of fear.
88. 5:14The second thing you have to get good at in order to get good at jumping off cliffs
89. 5:19is surviving the fall.
90. 5:23Jumping off a cliff is taking a giant step backwards
91. 5:26into the land of being a beginner again.
92. 5:28That means it's a very big learning process.
93. 5:31And with that comes a huge emotional roller coaster.
94. 5:36Daily. Weekly. Sometimes hourly.
95. 5:40All of my jumps have involved vacillating wildly
96. 5:44between feeling like, "Oh, maybe I'm going to be good at this,"
97. 5:48and then immediately feeling like,
98. 5:49"Who the hell even gave me this job in the first place?"
99. 5:53All of that is normal, and it doesn't actually mean that anything is wrong.
100. 5:58You have to learn to expect the roller coaster
101. 6:02and ignore it at the same time.
102. 6:05The most valuable mantra for me in this phase has been: give it two weeks.
103. 6:11A lot of people will tell you to sleep on it.
104. 6:14I can tell you most of these emotions don't go away overnight.
105. 6:19Two weeks is a great barometer
106. 6:21for things that you should actually pay attention to.
107. 6:25The third thing you have to get good at in order to get good at jumping off cliffs
108. 6:30is becoming a professional idiot.
109. 6:32(Laughter)
110. 6:34I can tell you that this is one of my greatest strengths.
111. 6:39I am comfortable sounding like a moron.
112. 6:43I am great at sitting in rooms with brilliant people
113. 6:47asking very dumb questions.
114. 6:50But what that actually means
115. 6:52is that I have become an extraordinary learner.
116. 6:57My favorite phrase is, "Sorry if this is a stupid question, but."
117. 7:02When you ask it that way, everybody wants to make you feel better.
118. 7:05They're like, "No, no, that's not a dumb question."
119. 7:09And then they would love to teach you what they know.
120. 7:13People love being teachers.
121. 7:15It makes them feel smart.
122. 7:19The other thing you discover is that most stupid questions
123. 7:24aren't actually stupid.
124. 7:27So many people are afraid of sounding dumb
125. 7:32that the world is littered
126. 7:34with important questions that never got asked.
127. 7:38Questions like,
128. 7:39"Can you define that word for me?",
129. 7:42"Why are we doing this?",
130. 7:45"Why are we having this meeting?"
131. 7:47(Laughter)
132. 7:50Embracing being a professional idiot
133. 7:52often actually makes you the most valuable person in the room.
134. 8:00There's a last thing, part of the illusion of the stairs,
135. 8:04that becomes really obvious the more cliffs that you jump off of.
136. 8:08And that is the idea that there is one set of stairs,
137. 8:12one definition of success.
138. 8:16I have a lot of friends that have climbed up the stairs
139. 8:19to some version of the top --
140. 8:22a fancy title, a lot of money, fame --
141. 8:26and then they've realized that they're miserable.
142. 8:30One friend described becoming CEO of her company
143. 8:34and immediately thinking,
144. 8:36"Is this all there is?"
145. 8:39You know what she did next?
146. 8:41She jumped off a professional cliff.
147. 8:44She went from being the CEO of a marketing agency
148. 8:47to helping people who were dying in hospice.
149. 8:51Success is not the same for everyone.
150. 8:58I know that what I'm talking about isn't easy.
151. 9:03It takes bravery to trade the known for the unknown.
152. 9:09It takes courage to do something
153. 9:12that might seem like a step sideways or backwards to someone else.
154. 9:18But you will never really know who you are or what you are capable of
155. 9:24until you learn how to try.
156. 9:28Thank you.
157. 9:30(Applause)