When I was a kid, I wanted to play football.  At other times I also half-joked about trying to become President of the United States.  For a long period, I also mentioned an interest in joining the military after high school.

My parents’ reactions were always the same and a variation of:

You’re too small

You’re Asian, that will never work, that isn’t for you/us.

You’re too shy, you can’t speak in front of people

You have asthma, it’ll never work

More often than not, it always dug at me deep down.

It bothered me that they never seemed to encourage anything other than academics and getting a high paying career.

I never did play football or join the military.

You know what I did do?

In college I played roller hockey.  

After college I got into martial arts/kung fu and was able to compete in two mixed martial arts tournaments.  

Somewhere along the way, I built friendships with people that encouraged and told me they believed that I could do it.

I can now run without worrying about asthma and while my body isn’t a perfect specimen (another story for another time), I’m so much more stronger and capable than my parents thought I was capable of.

I’ve achieved things career wise and professionally that I and my parents never dreamed were possible – speaking in front of hundreds of people and keynoting.

The misunderstood “ceiling”

That’s a big part of why it really irks me when I hear a leader prematurely write off a high potential employee or a middle manager saying that “they’ve hit their ceiling”.

2 years ago, a Lead Pastor of a church said this about a volunteer leader who had raised his hand to run the huge community outreach/carnival event.  

By all accounts, the event went well, but the lead up was a little chaotic and disorganized.  

Not because the volunteer leader was intentionally bad at it.

But because he had never ran a huge event with a project team like that before.

The Lead Pastor told me “I think he’s hit the ceiling of his ability”.

I strongly disagreed.

During the entire process, the volunteer never got any mentoring, coaching, or guidance.  He knew nothing about managing projects or leading teams. 

He was just given the reins and was told “Good luck, we’ll provide any support, but you got this”.

This past year, the same volunteer was happy to do it again, but knew where he fell short, but wasn’t sure how to get better at those other skills.

I told the both of them I’d mentor and coach him this time, helping him to better lead and manage the process.

Guess what?

He knocked it out of the park this past year.  

He was able to recruit more volunteers, vendors and team members were locked in and the schedule was a breeze.  

The entire planning and execution of the event was much smoother than the year before (from the behind the scenes perspective).  

The Lead Pastor was pleasantly surprised at how much better he performed this year and readily admitted he was wrong.

Are you the actual barrier?

In organizations everywhere, this happens all the time.

A new leader is given responsibility without any guidance or support. Then one of 3 things happen when they inevitably struggle: 

1. They can’t handle it and they’re written off as not being able to handle the new role.
2. They can’t handle it, but they do just enough to keep the role, stressing out everyone else around them with their poor management.
3. They figure it out on their own and learn some bad habits along the way to push the work forward and keep getting more responsibility.

This all comes back to a lack of systems and support and training/development.  

And so many times, leaders don’t give the right support because they’ve already made a snap judgement about “potential”.

Either someone has it or they don’t.  

And if they don’t – they either get pushed out or ignored and totally forgotten.

Get rid of the “ceiling”

In the NFL, millions of dollars are spent on the art and science of assessing talent and future potential.

But you know what happens after they make it to the pros?

They still get coaching.  In fact, they get hours and hours of development time, teaching, mentoring.

Because just potential isn’t enough, you need outside forces to shape it and mold it.  

When you think about your organization and the leaders you oversee, it’s hard to know what potential looks like.  Everyone defaults to their own journey and what they’ve seen and what’s worked for them.  

That’s a big part of why so many people end up criticizing the “younger generation” and the lack of work ethic – we’re still judging people on the old rules and playbook that worked for us.

What I’m calling for is this:

We need to stop prematurely deciding what someone else’s ceiling is before we give them REAL support.

Not a pep talk, not just “you got this, I believe in you”. 

But actual coaching. Actual guidance. Actual investment.

But ultimately, none of that will work if you keep limiting what you think other people can achieve. At some point, you should start asking yourself who put the ceiling there.

Stop looking at what has been and start wondering what’s possible for other people.  

They might surprise you.

Let me know if you have a similar story of people not believing in you, I’d love to hear your experiences so I don’t feel alone!

PS – Here are some additional ways I can help you:

1. Want to read a case study of how the imPACT Leadership Academy helped The Women’s Center leadership team function at a higher level?  Download it here: https://www.tinyurl.com/twccase
2. If you’re a human-services nonprofit that’s under 100 people, I help whole leadership teams get better at assessing and developing talent and themselves. Interested? Let’s talk about it, find some time here:  https://leadership-potential2.neetocal.com/hive