Imagine for a few moments an old fisherman. A man that has fished the same waters for decades. His weather beaten face, his rugged hands, the hat and jacket that he always wears just seems to be part of the landscape. He seems as if though one day the ocean brought him in during high tide and deposited him on the shore and here he is waiting to be called home one day.
If you were looking to catch a fish in the area of the ocean that his man knew well, you would not think for a moment to question his credibility. You would treat everything he instructed you to do as absolutely critical and you would follow every step, confident and full of faith that you would catch a fish. You would start fishing at the time he told you, you would go to the location that he instructed, and you would use the fishing tackle he recommended. When things went wrong, you would immediately accept his advice and course correct as he prescribed.
So I have a curious thought and a question. In many aspects of our lives, we have example of people around us that have much more experience than us at doing what we are doing. The first and obvious is in your career. Are you trying to get into a first solid position, or perhaps improve your current situation? Perhaps you are trying to get better at doing what you are doing? Perhaps you want to be a great leader in your field and you are looking for answers on how to approach that.
Many of us that are trying to improve our career prospects will turn to what we believe are credible sources. Books, courses, training programs are all common. However, what about that “old fisherman?” This is and was a hard lesson for me about leadership. I have always thought that I could figure out what no one else could. I figured that I could teach myself the valuable lessons and implement them with my youthful energy. I wince in regret as I think of all those times that I tried to “teach” people much wiser than me how to do their jobs.
The reason that I wince is because they knew something that I did not know. Experience is absolutely, hands down, unequivocally the best teacher. The reason is that over time, you just learn what works, the school of hard knocks beat out of you the silly things that you might do that make a lot of noise but produce no results. I imagine me, the youthful, passionate wannabe leader, jumping up and down and hollering about how we have to follow certain path. The wiser, more learned folks in my profession probably smiled to themselves and remembered when they were like that. Remembered how trivial things really did nothing to contribute to the bottom line. Instead, they would humor me, and then quietly go about the business of actually doing what is effective.
Pick any profession. School teacher, fire fighter, lawyer, sales person it does not matter. When you find the older, more experienced and wise person that has found success then you will have a treasure trove of what actually works. It is nothing more than youthful arrogance to ignore such a person. You would not ignore the fisherman, and for the same reasons you should not ignore the person with more experience than you. I remember when I was younger and I had just got a position as an Associate Professor at the college, how offended I was when I overheard a colleague talking to one of her students. I could not believe how direct and harsh she was being. I shook my head, saying to myself, I will never become that discouraged about my career that I treat another person that way. She retired a year later, I took over her office.
Fast forward 20 years or so, and I remember that I was being very blunt to a student in my office. He was not following good advice and was not putting in the work that was needed to be successful. I had to make an impact on this young man, I needed to get through to him. When I was done, I noticed one of my colleagues shaking their head at my conversation. She asked, “weren’t you being a little harsh?” That brought back the memory of that first day at the college. I suddenly knew, what that woman nearing her retirement also knew. You have a very short period of time to have an impact on a young person’s life, make those moments count. They may not like what you have to say, but somebody has to say it, and as the adviser to their educational experience, you are the one.
What I could have learned from that woman who retired. The experience that she had and the conclusions that she reached. She could have told me what the most important things were to focus on. How to have a better, more effective impact on a student’s life. What areas were a giant waste of time, what areas produced the most benefit. I had an opportunity to gain that valuable wisdom, but I was an arrogant, hot shot, technical wiz kid who thought he knew it all. Well, I learned, the hard way. I also learned that nobody wanted to hear my advice after 20 years. They were trying to figure it out on their own, just like I did.
One of the problems is that we do not understand, because of our limited experience, what questions to ask. With the old fisherman example, the question is obvious – “how do I catch a fish.” The objective is clear. With other pursuits in life, the objective is not so clear. What question do you ask? In my instructor example, what would I have asked her? How did you survive so long? How do you make enough money to be a college professor? Those were not the right questions. Finding the right question is the hardest challenge that experience is the only thing that can teach. Twenty years later, I knew the right question – How can I have an impact on the lives of the people that I have the privilege of teaching?
In a society that celebrates youth, we are missing something very important. People do not become awesome overnight. You do not suddenly become a great singer, dancer, or any other talent. We have shows that demonstrate how we “discover” a hidden talent like we might strike gold in a mine. This is all false, and anyone that has ever trained their ass off to become a great singer or dancer knows this for a fact. As we lament over the struggles in our society, looking for all the right answers to the wrong sorts of questions, we are missing something very vital.
The YouTube stars should be the most experienced in our society. That old fisherman could do a lot better helping you know how and what to do to catch a fish, then the little kid in a box trying to pimp his sponsor’s new fancy widgets. I often wonder how many old fishermen are in our lives that we could be talking to and learning how to actually find success rather than pretending to be successful when we really are not.
Guy Reams
