Stop Discarding People

Please stop discarding people because they don't live up to your standards today. 

The first seven years of my career, I was an average programmer (I’m being generous to me). Luckily, the people that surrounded me were patient, supportive, and willing to invest their time into my development. If those people were not around me at the beginning of my career, you would not be reading this post now.

Helping people develop personally and professionally is an exceptionally non-linear task. Organizations of all types spend endless amounts of money and time to help folks grow. There are so many factors that impact a person’s development that it’s impossible to predict their future. It’s also impossible to predict the way that the environment around the person evolves. Industry, technology, science are all advancing at a dizzying pace and all these factors impact how an individual develops.

Let’s not anoint ourselves as expert talent evaluators. Professional sports leagues tell a cautionary tale when it comes to talent evaluation. Pro sports leagues have entire staffs dedicated to pouring through hours of game film to project how potential draft picks would perform in their league and on their team. Even after viewing hours of game footage from the athletes, they interview the athletes and put them through private workouts. All of this work is done by talent evaluators that understand their sport at the deepest levels. Even with that, more that half of professional sports draft picks are considered to under-perform based on the expectations those talent evaluators had of them. 

But we still think we can make a definitive hiring decision about a person based on a 60 minute interview.

Don’t get me started on the dumpster fire that is youth sports. We especially don’t know how kids are going to develop. Some kids with amazing support systems and resources struggle, while other kids with meager resources and thin support systems find ways to thrive. How much yelling are you going to do at your seven year old that made a bad pass? Are we that intent on writing off athletes that haven't even hit puberty? Are we seriously discarding nine year olds because they don't live up to your standards today?

All of us play a role in the journeys of the people around us. Every interaction we have with another person holds the opportunity for us to have a positive impact on them. Let’s stop acting like we know what the future holds for a person. Instead, let’s focus on showing up for that person today in the best way we can.