Sorry, we're closed today. There’s always more to discover!
“Don’t let the fear of striking out keep you from stepping up to the plate.” This was a phrase I heard a LOT growing up from multiple baseball coaches. In this particular set of circumstances, it was not delivered as a metaphor for not giving up. No, in my case it was a directive to literally step up to the plate to take my “at bat” despite just about everyone understanding what the outcome was going to be. I played baseball for a very long time. I always made the team with my pals and in high school I sported a varsity letter. All this despite my inability to actually hit a ball. I frustrated many a coach and countless teammates over the years. My spot in the batting order was always safely secure in the 8 or 9 spot. One coach even asked the good Lord above for divine intervention every time I stepped to the plate. God, in this circumstance, was seldom on my side. During my senior year in high school my coach asked me…out loud…in front of my teammates…”Sinclair, how are you on this team?” Since he was the one who selected the roster, I found his question to be without merit.
To answer his question, the reason I was still on his team was because I was an excellent infielder. I regularly played short stop and, in a pinch, I would cover second base. If you saw me walking down the hallway between classes, you might think my body resembled something approaching a newborn giraffe or a drunk flamingo. I was all arms and legs and possessed close to zero coordination of my various moving parts and pieces. But when I laced up my cleats and slipped a well-worn glove onto my left hand, magic happened and any ball in the infield found its way into my glove. I earned my team more outs in our favor than when I was at bat, and thus, I was on the team. It’s worth noting that several decades later and with a bit of a gap in my days on the field, I have struggled to return to the glory days as I have tried to replicate my past success on our company softball team, but that’s not what this story is about so let’s move on.
It wasn’t until much later in life that I saw this quote on one of those cheesy home décor signs at a department store. At first, I thought it was out of place and wondered why a very pragmatic piece of advice to a batter was worthy of fine calligraphy on an artificially aged piece of wood meant to hang in some middle class living room somewhere in the middle of middle America. My son asked me what the sign meant, and I began to explain to him the psychology of a batter. Then I remembered this was one of two children that I had raised who failed to show any interest in life’s greatest pursuit and I abandoned the effort to try and get him into the mindset of The Babe. Instead, I told him that the sign meant that “you shouldn’t let the fear of failing at something stop you from trying.”
Uh…how about that…baseball is full of life lessons, who knew? The advice I was given as a gangly teenager unable to connect with a ball, would turn out to be advice that would shape my life and career. Very recently I was reminded of this life lesson, and it occurred to me that I might as well tell this story if for no other reason than to remind the next batter in the lineup that most of us strike out a lot more than we get a hit. But when we get a hit, there’s no greater feeling. And sometimes, every so often, we connect with the ball in just the right way and knock one out of the park. That feeling is so powerful it keeps you coming back to the plate inning after inning in search of the next hit.
About thirteen years ago I was growing increasingly unsatisfied with my employment situation. After nearly 17 years of working in museums I had decided to put that career on hold and go to work for my local city government. With my academic training, professional touch points as a consumer of government services and activities, and my personal interests in local politics, it seemed like a natural fit. I was fortunate to get hired for a city position at a very senior level and work directly with our duly elected officials. Turns out the romance of working for elected officials wears off pretty quickly and I found myself deeply missing my museum career. So, I took my wife out to a lovely dinner and when the time was right, I told her I wanted to quit my job, get back into a museum and that probably meant relocating to somewhere out of the state we called home.
To her credit, my lovely bride did not even flinch and agreed with my assessment. So we spent the next several months applying for positions, interviewing, and seeking new employment. At first it was exactly what you have probably experienced in a job search: a lot of nothing. Then, things started happening. An interview here, an interview there. Suddenly I was in the running for a couple different positions, and ultimately we found ourselves with multiple offers. I was so focused on the search that I hadn’t considered what it would be like once I had an offer. It was like sitting in the dugout with my pals shooting the breeze waiting for my at bat. The panic only ever set in when I stepped into the on-deck circle. A job offer is like a batter standing in the on-deck circle. You’re not really at bat yet, but it’s coming….really soon.
I accepted the position at a relatively new museum in a state I had only ever visited as a candidate for said position. Odd considering how many other states I had been to in my lifetime, and this one (just barely) bordered my home state. Regardless, the paper was signed and the umpire was calling “batter up.”
Here’s what’s interesting, I had been a CEO before at another museum. My career started at a much larger museum where I learned all the trade craft from giants in our field while I climbed from entry level to senior leadership. I was an experienced and abundantly qualified candidate for the job, and yet once I accepted the offer, I began to feel the same dread that would come over me when stepping into the batter’s box.
Sometimes this feeling is referred to as imposter syndrome. This is the feeling that people can get when they feel a sudden and acute inequity in their ability to do something that the external world sees them as perfectly capable of doing. Others refer to this in a more jovial manner as “fake it until you make it.” If you say that phrase with the right cadence and a smile on your face you can almost be lured into thinking that’s an acceptable strategy. My experience has been that the more enthusiastically someone utters this phrase, the higher their anxiety and sense of inequity.
Then there’s the dreaded Peter Principle. This is the idea that people are frequently promoted to their highest level of incompetency. The second part of that idea is that then they are left there to twist in the wind until they ultimately fail. It’s not a pleasant concept made all the more poignant by the notion that in many situations its less of a concept and more of a reality. An introspective person is tempted to stare too long in the mirror and fill their heads with self-doubt and fear that they too have risen to their highest level of incomitance.
The point here of course is that there is so much time and effort put into the pursuit of the opportunity, the chance to knock one out of the park, that little thought is put into the moment when you step up to the plate and deliver. The gangly giraffe has to coordinate all its limbs to smoothly strut the catwalk. It’s the first note played in the opening of a song. It’s the moment of serving the turkey at a table full of family and guests and hoping you got it right. It’s walking into the first day at a new job and uttering to yourself “you got this.” A new chapter, a transition, a fresh start are euphemisms for a change or transition, and here we stand with bat in hand up for our next at bat.
Human beings are naturally hard wired to resist change and to fear failure. It’s buried deep in the lizard part of our brain that is responsible for keeping us alive. Fight or flight is a very real and necessary instinct for an advanced primate to have since we do not possess the same brute strength of other members of the primate family or the defensive capabilities that come with claws, poisonous venoms, or other protective superpowers that exist throughout the animal kingdom. The problem with this instinct is that it does not apply to the social construct we have built and choose to navigate every day. If I fail at my job, I am not likely to be eaten by my employer. If I strike out at the plate, I’m not likely to be cast out of my clan. I’m proof positive of that idea.
So where does the fear and anxiety come from in these moments of transition? For me it arrived at a point where I had to summon 20 years of professional experience and academic training to deploy the entire body of knowledge I had gathered to point my organization in the right direction and get it to perform in relatively short order. It was a big task and while on paper I was qualified I still had to step to the plate and hit the ball.
Do you remember the first day of school each fall? If you were anything like me, as that day approached you became more and more filled with excitement and anxiety, often in equal parts. You probably knew the layout of the school, especially if this was the start of a new year and not the beginning of your time at that school. You had a general sense of the staff and faculty, the playground and ball fields were familiar stomping grounds, and the cafeteria had not and would not change for generations. Maybe you had friends in your class, so there would be familiar faces, or maybe the class list was all new. Mom had drug you reluctantly to the mall to shop for new school clothes, but your first day outfit was hanging in the closet where you checked and re-checked it several times to make sure you arrived in style and making the statement you wanted to make on the first day.
The first day on a new job is much the same. You have a general familiarity with what to expect and the kinds of amenities that will be waiting for you. There’s even a chance you know what the first day or two will look like. Orientation, tours, and paperwork….so much paperwork. Maybe even a terrible video or two to watch online and if you’re really lucky, you get to go somewhere else and leave some of your very personal biology behind in a cup. But after that it’s a total mystery of what the days ahead will hold.
I’ve made this transition several times now in my career and every time it’s the same set of excitement and anxiety. But there’s an added twist if your transition involves stepping into a new role that is in a leadership position. The twist is that the excitement and anxiety you have is mirrored by the organization that is welcoming you. There are staff whose fate you now control and yet you’re largely an unknown to them. There are expectations of the people that have hired you. Sure, there were interviews and background checks, but you never really know what someone is capable of until you’ve extended the offer, and they show up to do the work. Stats are great but every batter can find a slump. The point here is that in every transition and change there are no guarantees. You just have to step up to the plate, take a few pitches, and swing the bat.
There’s the other side of a transition to consider as well. Some of us are lucky enough to have built a portfolio of success. These are projects completed, goals achieved, professional relationships and friendships built up over time. The longer you serve one organization or another, the larger this portfolio of experiences become. Then, one day, you announce that you are going to leave this team and transfer to another. The uniforms are a different color, the coaching staff has a different approach, and you’ll have to learn the quirks of your new home field, but the rules of the game are still the same.
Leaving an organization can be hard. Just about nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I want to do badly at my job today.” Most of us go to work, put in an honest day’s work, and genuinely try to give our organization the best work product we can deliver. And when the day arrives for us to change teams, we generally bring that same approach. We want to give as much time as we can for a seamless transition. We want to wrap up projects and try and set up our successors for the best possible outcomes as they transition into their new job. My grandfather called it “doing the right thing” and my father called it “integrity.” How we leave a team is just as important as how we join a new one.
There’s another magical thing that happens when we make a professional transition. Most of us have heard that we tend to spend more time with our coworkers than we do with our significant others or family members. The rules and regulations that govern the modern day workplace make navigating those relationships a little more complicated in some ways, and in others really help define boundaries and foster work/life balance. If you’ve ever been a supervisor, especially if you’ve been promoted from within, you also get to learn the challenging lesson about what happens to workplace friendships when power balances change.
Another great mentor of mine would often tell me that “you can be friendly at work, but you can’t be friends.” I used to fight back against this argument and for a brief period of time firmly believed that I would be the exception to the rule. I quickly learned through a series of messy and painful “growth opportunities” what my mentor was talking about and how this plays out in the workplace. This concept should not be interpreted as being cold or impersonal. Quite the contrary. Indeed, I know rich and meaningful details about the lives, hopes and dreams of the people who work for me. Conversely, I have shared details about my life and experiences in my career in order to create meaningful connections with people and demonstrate my empathy and genuine care for their success and well-being. Remember, people work for people.
But here is where the line is drawn. Nobody that works for me has ever been to my house for a special event or casual gathering. I’ve never asked for a ride to the airport or offered to pick up one of their kids from school. The kinds of day to day things that friends do for each other during the normal course of life do not happen in the context of a work relationship, and yet these relationships can still be deeply rewarding and intensely personal. And this is where the magic trick occurs during a professional transition. The relationships you have accumulated now face a threshold. If both parties are interested, you get to cross that threshold, and these relationships get to take their next evolutionary step into the world of personal friendships.
Some of my most treasured friendships in my life today are the result of work relationships crossing this threshold. I sat with an old supervisor of mine in her hospice room years after she stopped being my boss as we talked about her fears of dying and the effects cancer had taken on her body. My wife is now best friends with a woman who once hired me and pushed me very hard for five years as I grew in my responsibilities, became her peer, and eventually became her supervisor. I receive Christmas cards and graduation notices from people I have worked with, for, or who worked for me over the years.
Of course it doesn’t always work. Sometimes distance, time and other factors are too great of a gulf to span. Not every relationship is designed to survive a transition. Not all transitions are smooth and positive, and relationships can become casualties. These are the pitches that life delivers across the plate and again, we cannot let the fear of striking out prevent us from taking a swing.
And so, I find myself once again stepping up to the plate. After a dozen years in my current position circumstances have presented themselves where I have been invited to join another team. It was always going to take something very special with just the right lineup to lure me away from my current team. Low and behold those circumstances have emerged. I am over the moon excited about this next opportunity and as a veteran player I am stepping to plate with a little more confidence than the younger and less experienced version of myself once had.
I am also nervous about leaving my current team. I have invested a dozen years in this organization. I have made this community my home. My kids have graduated high school and college while we have been here. I am feverishly working in my final days to tee my successor up for a great at bat because it’s the right thing to do. I have no idea how big my shadow will loom. I would like to think that I have built up my organization and not a personal legacy. This was never about me, but I am also a pragmatic person and I have stepped into the CEO role and shadow following long serving and incredibly successful predecessors. I understand that we each leave our mark on both the community and the organizations we lead. Pride wants me to think those marks are all positive. Hubris forces me to realize that’s highly unlikely. The point is, some members of this team will welcome a set of new ideas, new plays and a fresh start. Others will push back, resist change, and want to talk about the old glory days. I just have to trust that things will sort themselves out and the game will go on.
I am excited to see which of the relationships I have spent 12 years building take their next evolutionary step and which ones don’t. And I’m excited to meet the new roster of players, to find their rhythm, to learn their plays, and teach them some new tricks of my own. The umpire is calling me to the plate, and while there will always be some fear of striking out it will never stop me from taking a swing. Play ball!