Have you ever found yourself in front of an audience of intellectual giants?
In my former role at IBM, I occasionally facilitated management development classes at the IBM Research Lab in Almaden, CA. The storied IBM Research organization is full of people who are at the top of their game in a wide range of technical fields. There have been five Nobel prize winners among the IBM Research workforce. The talent there is dedicated to finding and telling scientific truths.
I ran a couple of half-day sessions to develop Research managers’ skills in giving feedback. Those classes were so well received that I was invited back to facilitate another program, this time to develop coaching skills.
“The premise of coaching is that everyone, no matter how good they already are, can raise their game. Coaching is a way to make that happen.” So went the opening of my class.
The next moment, a fellow stood up from one of the tables and approached me at the front of the room. He said, “I don’t agree with the premise. This isn’t the class for me.” And then he left. The rest of the room eyed me. After a doubt-filled pause, I decided to just carry on. The rest of the session went fine.
Reflecting on it later, I realized that in almost any other setting, that fellow would have fabricated an excuse. Perhaps he would have claimed that his boss had just texted about something that needed immediate attention, or that he received an email on his phone from his kid’s school about a problem, or that he was suddenly not feeling well. But the Research culture is so dedicated to finding and telling the truth, so values the truth over any urge to save the instructor’s feelings, that he just told me that he thought the premise of coaching didn’t hold water.
I told this story over dinner the other night with a former IBM colleague and he laughed loud and hard. He thought that perhaps the Research manager WAS actually trying to save my feelings - - that it might have struck him as more sensitive and respectful to offer, and easier for me to accept, a valid intellectual reason for his departure, than some made-up excuse.
While I believe in the capacity for life-long growth and development, what I realized from this experience is that some people may not share this widely-held view. It’s not just that they’re stuck and don’t (yet) see how to take the next step in development. Rather, they truly believe that they have developed all the capacity they are capable of developing, at least in the ways they care about. Mathematicians, for example, tend to do their greatest work early in their careers. They may not ever get better at math after their 20’s or 30’s. Could they get better at coaching, or managing, or parenting? I think so. Would raising one’s game in those domains matter much to people who are (or have been) THE world’s expert in a specialized realm?
It must be tough to truly be (or have been) at the pinnacle of one’s field. And even tougher to have such a person as one’s manager.
In my former role at IBM, I occasionally facilitated management development classes at the IBM Research Lab in Almaden, CA. The storied IBM Research organization is full of people who are at the top of their game in a wide range of technical fields. There have been five Nobel prize winners among the IBM Research workforce. The talent there is dedicated to finding and telling scientific truths.
I ran a couple of half-day sessions to develop Research managers’ skills in giving feedback. Those classes were so well received that I was invited back to facilitate another program, this time to develop coaching skills.
“The premise of coaching is that everyone, no matter how good they already are, can raise their game. Coaching is a way to make that happen.” So went the opening of my class.
The next moment, a fellow stood up from one of the tables and approached me at the front of the room. He said, “I don’t agree with the premise. This isn’t the class for me.” And then he left. The rest of the room eyed me. After a doubt-filled pause, I decided to just carry on. The rest of the session went fine.
Reflecting on it later, I realized that in almost any other setting, that fellow would have fabricated an excuse. Perhaps he would have claimed that his boss had just texted about something that needed immediate attention, or that he received an email on his phone from his kid’s school about a problem, or that he was suddenly not feeling well. But the Research culture is so dedicated to finding and telling the truth, so values the truth over any urge to save the instructor’s feelings, that he just told me that he thought the premise of coaching didn’t hold water.
I told this story over dinner the other night with a former IBM colleague and he laughed loud and hard. He thought that perhaps the Research manager WAS actually trying to save my feelings - - that it might have struck him as more sensitive and respectful to offer, and easier for me to accept, a valid intellectual reason for his departure, than some made-up excuse.
While I believe in the capacity for life-long growth and development, what I realized from this experience is that some people may not share this widely-held view. It’s not just that they’re stuck and don’t (yet) see how to take the next step in development. Rather, they truly believe that they have developed all the capacity they are capable of developing, at least in the ways they care about. Mathematicians, for example, tend to do their greatest work early in their careers. They may not ever get better at math after their 20’s or 30’s. Could they get better at coaching, or managing, or parenting? I think so. Would raising one’s game in those domains matter much to people who are (or have been) THE world’s expert in a specialized realm?
It must be tough to truly be (or have been) at the pinnacle of one’s field. And even tougher to have such a person as one’s manager.
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