 Successful leaders tend to be forward-focused individuals. Yet the relentless pursuit of the next plateau can often leave even the most accomplished individual feeling a bit empty. G. Richard Shell, the Thomas Gerrity Professor of Legal Studies, Business Ethics and Management at the Wharton School, is the author of Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success. In this interview with Soundview, he discusses why people search for a golden key that doesn't exist and why finding success is truly an exercise in confronting fear.
Soundview: You take the time to tell readers, "There are no secrets." Why do people labor under the premise that success is a mystery?
G. Richard Shell: I labored under that impression for long enough to try to understand it. When we look outside at the people around us, all of us tend to think that they know something about their lives and about what they're accomplishing that gives them an edge, and we just wish we had it. It's a kind of projection of our own insecurity on other people and feeling that they must know something we don't know. I think a lot of success books cater to that impression by carrying titles [containing words] like "The Secret" and things like that. It kind of gives you the impression that somewhere under a rock someplace is this golden key and if only you can find it, then everything in your life will work. That's a great prescription for selling books that purport to tell you where the key is, but it turns out not to be a great prescription for having a satisfying life.
Soundview: The book requires readers to confront two big questions: What is success? How will I achieve it? Let's start with defining what is success. You write that finding what success means to a person often involves trial and error. How do people confront the fear of leaving a current situation in favor of an attempt at something that might fail?
Shell: This is the first hurdle. We start facing it when we're about four or five years old and our parents tell us to jump in a pool. You look around and go, "Really? Do I have to do that? I'd much rather stay here on the side of the pool." I think that that kind of fear of the unknown, the sense that we're taking risks follows all of us throughout life. People are anxious before they take any big step whether it's getting married or changing jobs or graduating from college. All of these moments of uncertainty give us a big pause, but I think that any concept of a successful life has to include some risk. I tend to help people think about that by having them ask themselves would they rather just play it safe and be bored or would they rather have their lives be in color and be interesting. I think that people prefer a life where they take some chances and learn to the life that's just sort of safe and protected. But every time we come up to the edge of the pool, we have to encounter the fear, encounter the sense of uncertainty and just jump. |
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