What You're Really Meant To Do

Robert S. Kaplan: It is very common. Listen, thoughtful people are always thinking this, and the reason is things are always changing, the job is always changing, the world is always changing, you are always changing. All these factors are always changing, so it's not surprising that industries become commoditized in that it's one thing to be a practicing doctor 30 years ago, it's a totally different job now because of managed care and everything else, it's not surprising that people change in the way they feel.

Rachel Salaman: One of the first questions you ask in your book is, "What does it mean to be successful?" What's your answer to that?

Robert S. Kaplan: Well what I've learned is every person needs to try the best they can to come up with their own definition, as opposed to take others' definition. My definition is: "Am I making a positive impact on the world and on others, and using as best as I can my abilities, the best of my abilities to do that? Am I actually needed, wanted, adding value and being able to bring not all my skills, but as much of my skills as possible to do that?" And that's what I'm always striving to do.

Rachel Salaman: In your view, what's the difference between being successful and achieving your potential?

Robert S. Kaplan: Success in this world normally means metrics. So money and title go a long way in this world, pick up any magazine, People. Time, you name it, the people that are being celebrated are "the winners," they are people that have achieved metrics and status and position in their careers. The issue before the house with a lot of people though is that does not necessarily mean they are reaching their potential. The biggest example of that is a lot of people out there feel like, "Gee, if I just have X amount of money then I would be happy," or, "If I could just make partner in my firm then I would be happy," and then they make it and then they say, "Oh my God, it doesn't feel the way I thought it would feel, I thought I would be happy and it doesn't feel that way." Then the question is "why?" So, sometimes the most startling or traumatic thing for some people is they reach a metric they've always been striving for, and they feel empty, and then they are totally shocked and they're not sure exactly how to deal with that.

Rachel Salaman: And is that about them achieving someone else's idea of what success is, rather than achieving their own potential?

Robert S. Kaplan: Yes, it might be. It's about what are their strengths and weaknesses? And what are their passions? What do they love to do? And are they doing something that uses some of their skills, those strengths, and meets some of their passions? And it's never going to be perfect, but are they doing enough of it? Now, for some people it may not mean changing jobs, it might mean delegating some things that they just hate that are a necessary part of the job, or it may mean not changing jobs, but getting more actively involved in their community on a non-profit board, or broadening out their lives so that they can use more of their capabilities in a broader way. But it starts with being aware of your strengths and weaknesses and your passions, and why you do what you do, and why you feel the way you do, and then seeing if you can connect it to what you're actually doing.

Rachel Salaman: In the book you talk about starting out on this journey to explore what you're really meant to do with the right frame of mind, the right mindset. What are your five rules of the road?

Robert S. Kaplan: Here's what I mean by that, and I go through rules of the road. Number one, you've got to take ownership. A lot of people, particularly if you work in a company, think they are going to tell me what they want me to do, I'm just going to keep my head down, do my job and if people are going to coach me and they're going to tell me what I should be doing, and if they think I should be in a different job, they're going to tell me. Well, that isn't going to work in my opinion. You need to take ownership of understanding your own strengths and weaknesses and your own passions, and you will go a lot farther in the company, and companies expect you to take ownership. Number two, I'll give you a couple of other rules of the road, beware of conventional wisdom, it's almost always wrong for you. So, in every company, in every college and in every place you go in every town, there are the smart folks who say, "Let me tell you, here's the way to get ahead, here's what you need to do." And that advice is often old, out of date, wrong, and certainly doesn't fit who you are and your skills. So, everybody knows you should go to work at a hedge fund, that's the hot job. Well, no, not if you don't like the markets, it's not the right job, and so beware of that. You've got to do your own analysis. Number three rule of the road would be, do you assume that justice will prevail? Do you believe justice will prevail, or do you believe the world is basically unfair? And I think to reach your potential, even if it's a leap of faith, you've got to make an assumption that the world is fair and justice will ultimately prevail. And this is a hard one for people, because everybody has experienced injustice: "I didn't get promoted," "I was unfairly judged," everybody has been through that. And, sometimes, people become a prisoner of an injustice done to them, and so they stop trusting others, they stop trying to help others, they stop doing a lot of things that would make them more effective, because they think, "My previous experience was ‘I don't get credit for that,' I'm only going to do what I know I get credit for instead of acting like an owner at your firm and having a faith that just will prevail." So those are three biggies, those are a mindset that you need to have, and I think they will help you do better and get farther.

Rachel Salaman: And, so, with that frame of mind, that mindset, people might set off on their journey using your roadmap, and the first step is something you mentioned earlier, to assess your strengths and weaknesses. I thought it was interesting that your definition of strengths is quite nuanced. For example, you distinguish between skill-based strengths and personal characteristics. Why is it useful to do that, to make those distinctions?

Robert S. Kaplan: Here's my point. First of all, strengths should be skill based, and people tend to talk in generalities, and I think it's not very useful for people in trying to do an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses, so I want to have it be skill based. But, number two, it needs to be relative to a job. So, I kid around in the book: I'm a fast runner, I'm a very fast runner, but if the job for me was to be an Olympic sprinter, forget it, it ain't happening, that's a weakness, it's no longer a strength. And, so relative to being a brain surgeon, I might be good with my hands but until you tell me relative to being a brain surgeon, and then the truth is it's probably a weakness, not a strength. So you've got to do the analysis relative to a job, to a certain task, bring it down to ground level. And what I'm saying to people on strengths and weaknesses, you've got to acknowledge what you're not good at, or what you're weak at, and people struggle with that. And the reason it's so important is not because you're going to go run out and fix it, or that you need to change jobs, but you do need to be aware of it, because if you're aware you have a weakness you might, for example, if you're running a company, you may hire a couple of people who have complementary skills and they will complement your weaknesses, but you can only do that if you're aware and some people think they need to be good at everything and they can never acknowledge they're not, and they try to do a lot of things they're lousy at and it hurts their own performance and it hurts that of their company.

Rachel Salaman: So what advice do you have for those people who aren't very aware of their strengths and weaknesses?

Robert S. Kaplan: Number one, you've got to be able to write it down, and the only way I know how to do that is to seek the observations of people who watch you every day. So, in other words, you have to seek feedback from people who observe you, and believe me, people around you, people listening to this podcast, the five people who work around you, I assure you, if I ask them your strengths and weaknesses, they could tell me in a nanosecond. My fear is that everybody around you knows your weaknesses except for you, and the reason for that is people don't tell you unless you ask. Why? Because they don't want to offend you, to give somebody some feedback on a weakness they might have to upset you, so it's really up to you to go out and ask and invite people to give you that feedback. And this is what my biggest fear is, people are walking around out there and they actually don't know they have two or three big weaknesses, and if they just could acknowledge it they would dramatically improve immediately because they would adjust either the people they surround themselves with, and they might not necessarily try to improve on those weaknesses, but they could take a lot of other tactical steps that would allow them to be more effective.

Rachel Salaman: I would think that some people aren't straightforward about discussing other people's weaknesses even when they are asked directly, isn't that the case?

Robert S. Kaplan: I've got to tell you, you've got to be patient with people, and they have to believe that you are sincere in wanting the feedback. If they think you're sincere, and I know myself, I'm not going to volunteer it if it's unwelcome, but if I'm convinced somebody really wants to hear feedback and they're motivated to improve, I will tell them, but I'm going to size them up first to see if they mean it.

Rachel Salaman: So let's say someone is able to identify their strengths, and, importantly, their weaknesses, what should they do with that knowledge? For example, in your experience, is it worthwhile addressing their weaknesses, or is it better for them to focus on their strengths?

Robert S. Kaplan: It depends how realistic it is to improve the weakness. So, I gave the example earlier about the Olympic sprinter, that I'm not fast enough, so I'm never going to improve on that, some people are not quantitative, they could work for the next 20 years and they are still not going to be quantitative, so I don't think it's a good use of their time to try to get more quantitative. It might be a good use of their time to just know enough conceptually to be able to review the work of others who are quantitative. So, I think you have to make a judgment on your strengths and weaknesses about which ones are realistic that you can address and which are not realistic, because you're not going to get any medals for trying to improve on things that are not realistic for you to improve on. So that's where judgment comes in. So it starts with awareness, then you have to think about tactically what are your options, and, in some jobs by the way, and depending on the position you're in, you could have a stark weakness, it won't hurt your effectiveness at all because you can just hire someone or delegate to a person who is very good at it and problem solved, no problem.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, and it sounds so negative doesn't it? "Weakness." But actually it can just be a neutral thing?

Robert S. Kaplan: Yes, it sounds terrible and if you're the smartest person in your class or you're very insecure, you're afraid what other people think, you may think it's a sign of weakness to admit that you have a weakness and you just don't want to do it, and unfortunately what that does, it might shut you down from making progress and I'm trying to encourage people to not do that, and that's why the first rule of the road is take ownership, act like an owner of your career and your life and your skills. This is not somebody else's job, this is yours, and I think if you have that mindset it may make it easier for you to face up to some of these things.

Rachel Salaman: But nevertheless, you do say at this point that coaches can play an important role. How does that work best in your experience?

Robert S. Kaplan: People use mentoring and coaching as if they're interchangeable, and they're not. Mentoring is I tell you a story and you give me advice based on my story, and the problem is that your advice is only as good as my story, and so mentoring often cannot help you with these strengths and weaknesses points, because if the person observed you they'd have a totally different point of view. It's like for people who play tennis or golf, if you describe your strength to a golf or tennis coach over the telephone they might tell you it sounds great, but if they saw you swing they would say it's terrible, and that's the difference between mentoring and coaching. Coaching on the other hand is feedback from people who directly observe you and they are going to see things that you can't see, all of us have blind spots, and getting feedback from people who observe you helps you overcome and address those blind spots.

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Rachel Salaman: Moving on to the next step, it's finding your passion, and you point out that most successful people are passionate about what they do and you mentioned this earlier, but you also pointed out that it's not quite that simple. For example, someone might be a passionate musician or runner, that was the example you used, but it might not be good enough to make a living from that or be really successful at it, how can you assess your passion correctly?

Robert S. Kaplan: Here's what I try to ask people to do. A lot of people have got very rusty or out of date on assessing their passions because they haven't done it in a long time, or they think once you're in a job the time for that is over, and it's not. So I try to get people to think of a time when they shined, when they did great. Let your imagination run back to when you were really outstanding at something and you loved it, and then look at what were you doing. What tasks were you working on? What was the nature of what you were doing, and why did you love it so much? And what could you learn from that about what your passions are? And so what would you do if you had X amount of money where you felt like you didn't have to work, so then what would you be doing? What if, God forbid, you only had two years to live, what would you be spending your time on? What do you do in your free time and why? All those questions are intended to get at you better understanding your passions, and I think it's critical that you do that because passion is the fuel that propels you to work, go through bad days, bad months, and in particular it's the fuel that motivates you to work on your weaknesses, if you decide to do that, and really assess your strengths and weaknesses, it provides all sorts of motivation to get better at what you're doing.

Rachel Salaman: Some commentators have suggested that passion should be an end goal rather than a starting point for a career. We interviewed someone recently on Expert Interview who was very pragmatic and he talked about the importance of career capital, that you had to build your skills first in an area that you were interested in, and then passion would be the result, rather than the starting point. What's your view of that?

Robert S. Kaplan: It's probably not at one extreme or another, for some people if you're performing at a high level of competence you might like what you're doing better, that's possible, but my guess is also without taking that into account there are just some things you know you love and some things you don't love. I think you've got to think about both, it's not either or, you have to think about both. The way I like to say it is, "How do you add value?" But that value add must be realistic, i.e. it must be grounded in distinctive competencies, in other words, there needs to be one or two or three things you do extremely well. So, I might want to play center field for the Yankees, but I need to back that up with one or two or three distinctive competencies that allow me to do that, and if those competencies don't fit my strengths and weaknesses then it ain't happening.

Rachel Salaman: Let's move on to the next step which is understanding yourself. What do you gain by looking at your life story?

Robert S. Kaplan: The point of it we go through strengths, weaknesses, passions, the mindset, all this stuff, and so invariably someone will say, "Rob, I can't do that," and I will say, "You can't do what?" and they'll say, "I can't seek advice, it makes me feel insecure to seek observations or feedback from people who have observed me. Why? I don't know why." Well, the truth is if they dig deep enough, that probably growing up or their relationship with their parents or maybe an interaction they had, a trauma with a coach, or something where they felt stupid or inadequate or insecure and the trauma never left them and it's holding them back now. And what I want people to do when I say, "Understand your life story," and other people, Bill George and others, talk about this, that your narrative, and everybody has a big success narrative that we're all telling each other, I did this and then I graduated here and then I went here and then I went here, and there are always obstacles that I overcame and it's a big happy success story. The truth is most of us also have a huge failure narrative in our head, forget most of us, everybody I've ever met has got, "I'm no good at this, I'm no good at that," but we never tell that story, but it's in our heads. Then the question is, why? And how is it affecting your behavior today? I'm offered a promotion, I turned it down. Why? Well, I just think it's too much pressure. But how did you feel after you turned it down? Well, I was devastated, I felt terrible. So a lot of us are doing things, me included, that are somewhat self-destructive, I can't figure out why the heck I'm doing it, but I'm doing it, but I don't know why. And, so in order to reach your potential, you've got to also understand yourself and why you do what you do, and try to come to grips with it. You need to understand your life story, but you don't need to be a prisoner of your story, you want to be, as they say, "the author of your future," you want to understand your past but also author your future. And there's a lot of people out there that have never moved beyond their past and traumas in their past, and those listening to this podcast, everybody listening I bet, will know exactly what I'm talking about as it relates to them. Then the question is, "What do you want to do about it?" and what I'm suggesting is it starts with acknowledging it, rather than denying it. Be aware of it and then think about is that past behavior? Is that trauma that you're carrying around with you, is it hurting you, is it helping you reach your potential? And maybe it's time to drop some of that baggage, or at least be aware when you're making a decision that you have certain tendencies that may be sabotaging you.

Rachel Salaman: You talk about dream jobs in the chapter on making the most of opportunities and you say it's important to speak up about your dreams, why is that?

Robert S. Kaplan: Because, shockingly, your boss is not psychic and I think a lot of us think, "If I work at a company and I've been there for many years and they know me, they know what I'm interested in, and if a big promotion or a big opportunity comes they are going to think of me." Well, the reality is they are thinking about lots of people, especially if it‘s a big company, they're thinking about a whole lot of people and they're actually expecting you to speak up a bit and tell them what you love and what you're interested in, and you're making their job easier. Now, in order to do that you have to actually know what are your strengths and weaknesses, what are your passions, and is there a job in this place that actually, "Boy I'd love to do that someday." Because the reality is you might be able to do it if you speak up. Now, also a lot of people don't speak up because they don't want to offend their current boss, so you have to use your judgment, but I've seen this over and over again where somebody gets picked for a job and I write about it in the book and people are devastated that they weren't asked, and as they think it through they realize they weren't asked because they never talked to the boss because they thought that wasn't their job to do that, and I think it is.

Rachel Salaman: You include a chapter called "good versus great," and it's about character and leadership. What tips do you have for people whose ideal job has nothing to do with leading, they just don't want to be a leader?

Robert S. Kaplan: Here's what I mean by leadership, and it may surprise people. My definition of leadership is, "Can you figure out what's your belief, and then do you have the guts to act on it in a way that adds value to others?" That's my definition of leadership. By that definition you don't actually need to manage anybody to be a leader, also by that definition you can manage thousands of people and not be a leader at all, and people who reach their potential in my experience are people who show some character in leadership, figure out what they believe, and act on it in a way that adds value to others. So, if somebody says, "I don't want to do that, I'm just interested in doing my job, going home and being left alone," I would say, "Fine, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I would say to you this is a choice you're making." Everything in this book, when I say "the road map," this is if you are motivated and you want to reach your potential and you choose, you want to reach your potential, and I'm saying this is a key ingredient of it, act like an owner, do for others without regard to what's in it for you. And if you don't want to do that, or you can't be bothered with that, I don't have a problem with that, I'm just saying I think you are not going to get as far as those who do and you just need to accept that. This is a choice, and it's for many people a critical choice, the only issue I would say is there are some people, many people I've met in their careers who say, "No, no, no, I don't do that, I don't mentor, I don't coach, I don't recruit, I don't do any of that stuff, I produce, I'm a big producer." And then, invariably, they get to a point in their career where they say, "I'm bored, I'm sick of this, I've done it, I want to do the next thing," and they go to the boss and they say, "Now I'm ready to be a leader." And the boss says, "Well, let me tell you how it works, we don't promote people into leadership jobs until you demonstrate leadership abilities, and you've never done that, so if you want to demonstrate leadership abilities, go ahead, and then we'll observe you and then we'll put you in a leadership position, but we don't want to put you in charge of other people or a unit if you don't act like a leader first." And they get very upset and they realize they short-circuited potentially their own careers, and they hadn't figured that out.

Rachel Salaman: It sounds like it's about planning ahead?

Robert S. Kaplan: It is, but I've seen it over and over again, and a lot of people get confused in many industries. The big producer, it seems, is the one that gets rewarded, but I can tell you that you can be a big producer and still act like a leader, still act like an owner, still help others, still add value, and I have found by and large that over a long period of time people enjoy their jobs more when they walk into the place and feel like it's their firm and these are their people, even if they're just an employee, I think that mindset makes the job a whole lot more fun. It does for me, and it does for a lot of other people that I know.

Rachel Salaman: You talk about the importance of conviction, but it can also be someone's downfall if their conviction is so strong that they ignore warning signs and lead people off a cliff?

Robert S. Kaplan: I agree with that, so fair enough, there are always three things you're doing to get to conviction: diagnosis, what to do and how to do it, why do leaders fail? Why do people fail? Isolation and inability to learn. So, back to your point about conviction, while you're trying to figure out what you believe, you've got to get advice of others, opinions of others, observations of others, feedback from others, you have to be willing to listen to others, you have to be willing to tolerate disagreement, debate, entertain the thought that you might be wrong, entertain the thought that you don't know everything, that you've got something to learn, you've got to be open to learning. And I say this in the book, and that's one of the other rules of the road: are you open to learning? It's hard to reach your potential if you're not open to learning, and so you need to still strive, in my opinion, to figure out what you believe, but the process for how you do it needs to include being open to opposing views and learning from others, and effective people know that they've got to do that, they've got to take into account other factors and be open to learning and I think if you have that mindset and intellectual humility is always a good thing.

Rachel Salaman: That's linked to another important step you advise people to take which is to build relationships, how does that fit into finding out what you're really meant to do?

Robert S. Kaplan: My comment in the book, and what I write in this chapter, is that you can't do this alone. I don't believe you can reach your potential all by yourself, and the reason is we all have blind spots, we all need feedback, we all need to avoid isolation and be open to learning, and you can only do that in conjunction with others, and so what I urge people to think about is, "Do they have relationships, and do they cultivate relationships?" Now, there's lots of people out there saying, "Oh my God, relationships, I'm connected to a thousand people on LinkedIn and Twitter," and so on, but that's not a relationship. What I mean by relationship is a mutual understanding, trust and respect. By that definition people realize they may have very few relationships, and in some cases people find they have no relationships. These are people that you can talk to, that you can get feedback from, you can talk about a dicey situation you're going through, a tough judgment you're trying to make. And you don't just plop yourself down in somebody's office that you don't know and get this kind of advice, you need to allow people to get to know you, and you've got to get to know them and cultivate them. And, by the way, I find a great way to build a relationship is to be open and available to them when they need help and advice, and so I think this is a very critical part of reaching your potential, and, ironically, and I'll date myself, the "younger generation" is a little more isolated even than we were because things are so remote, the technology now is so remote and there are so many communication choices, they tend to get badly misused. Where you should be meeting in person versus a phone call, you should be doing a phone call instead of an email, face-to-face and live is often better, and many relationships get destroyed or confused or damaged because people pick the wrong mode. That didn't happen 30 years ago because we didn't have many choices, but it does happen a lot today.

Rachel Salaman: I suppose the tip there is just to think about what the right mode might be, depending on the relationship and the communication that's about to happen.

Robert S. Kaplan: I agree with that, the mode is very critical.

Rachel Salaman: You end the book by bringing it all together. What final advice do you have for people who want to follow this road map in a sustainable manner?

Robert S. Kaplan: Basically, I give a lot of exercises in the book and encourage people that this is a process, this is like losing weight or getting in shape, it's not something you arrive at ever, it's not something that you can do in a sprint, in the same way you're not going to lose 30 pounds in three weeks, you're not going to do that. And so, if I told you, "You've got to lose weight," or "You need to get in shape," you're going to say, "Oh my god, this is a lifelong process and it will never end." Well that's the way this is, and I'm just trying to get people to think about this now in a different way, and to realize that everybody in the planet is going through this, they're not alone.

Rachel Salaman: Robert Kaplan, thank you very much for joining us.

Robert S. Kaplan: Thank you very much Rachel, I appreciate it.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Robert's book again is "What You're Really Meant To Do: A Road Map for Reaching Your Unique Potential." I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview, until then goodbye.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview, until then goodbye.