High performers got to where they are in their career based on a relentless pursuit of excellence, their willingness to say yes to almost everything, growing responsibility, and a reputation for delivering outstanding results.
Along the way, you sharpened your judgment, formed a point of view within your field, and cultivated a strong network.
In the early years of your career, you built mastery.
This happened over time, and with a lot of hard work.
And now in the mid to late years of your career, something different is required.
The stage of advanced mastery.
Advanced mastery isn’t about mastery over a domain, rather mastery over leverage.
Advanced mastery is about creating the conditions so that other people’s capabilities produce results.
The judgment which you have built over years shifts in this stage to judgment about how to allocate resources, develop people, balance competing interests, and influence peers.
And in order to do all this, you have to give up the things you used to be most competent in.
It can be a painful shift, because it requires you to give up what is familiar.
You can’t continue saying yes to the things that helped you build early mastery.
They actually inhibit your ability to build advanced mastery.
Advanced mastery requires you to tolerate a certain amount of discomfort, as the people around you have imperfect execution until they build up their own capability and grow in their judgment.
Advanced mastery also requires you to make decisions with incomplete information. You must grow in your ability to navigate uncertainty and know how to reduce the factors that are unknown and grow the list of factors you already know.
There is one other area where you must grow in you ability to tolerate discomfort. And that is moving from the short-term where you seeing the results of your work quickly to taking the long view.
It’s uncomfortable not to see results fast. But when you take the long view, and set up the systems and structures to deliver the results that are needed in the long-run, you bypass short-term quick fixes, and ultimately achieve your goals.
The result of mastery
Then a really beautiful thing happens after you achieve advanced mastery.
You start to develop a sense of ease.
All the hard work you did early in your career, and the effort you put into building advanced mastery bear the fruit of ease.
From the outside, your ability to generate results through your systems and structures looks easy.
What has gone on behind the scenes, though, is that your judgment is being put to work to create new leverage for you.
Rather than relying on effort, you rely on discernment.
You have learned how to reduce effort, make your judgment work for you to create results, focus your attention rather than waste it, and delay commitment until you’ve assessed uncertainty.
Photo by Siarhei Nester on Pexels
If you’ve achieved ease in your career, drop me a line. I’d love to hear about it.
And if you’re ready to experience ease, let me know.
Love,
Audrey
