Stop staying in your lane
At the Leadership Community, we are passionate about developing leaders. While designing our leadership development pipeline, we decided to install our filtering system—after all, not everyone is suitable for the leadership development process.
We chose three C's as our filtering system. These are certainly not unique to us. We created a short course that we called ‘An Introduction to Christian Leadership.’ In it we unpacked the importance of Character, Competence, and Culture.
Today, I'd like to share a thought about competence.
None of us can be good at everything—I certainly know I'm not, despite my attempts.
However, I do want to push back on the often perceived wisdom that sounds like this: "Jack, stick to your lane." This seems to make sense, right?
‘Pick a lane and stick to it’.
We are told that we need to become more and more narrow in what we spend our time doing. Laser-sharp focus is the advice of almost every online productivity guru. I attended too many of these "productivity" webinars myself and I am bored with lazy takes like "stay in your lane".
What if you're not meant to find your niche, but discover instead that you are the niche?
Let me suggest a fresh framing that is helping me rethink how I work and the whole area of competency.
If our ultimate goal is efficiency, then we may buy into the idea that we need to find our niche and stick to our lane.
This can be disastrous news for those of us who have interests in more than one area or have a hundred ideas a day.
The Industrial Revolution turned us all into replaceable cogs in a wheel. The ideal worker since this revolution has been one who can do one thing—efficiently, mechanically.
But history is littered with titans of achievement who didn't follow the factory handbook.
For example, da Vinci was sketching scientific doodles between his art projects, displaying a sophisticated understanding of the human anatomy. Steve Jobs was crossbreeding calligraphy with computer science. Even Einstein was a patent clerk moonlighting as a physicist.
My point: developing competency is less about finding your niche and staying in your lane; it's more about daring to veer outside the lines, embracing the niche that are your quirky interests and idiosyncrasies.
I'll throw this thought into the mix while I'm typing: competency is less about your intelligence and more to do with your interests.
You can have all the intelligence in the world, but if you don't go in the direction of your interests, you will never be as competent as you can be.
Interests are the raw materials that feed your intelligence. In fact, my theory is that feeding your interests makes you more intelligent.
I've interacted with leaders who have lost their appetite for new ideas, fresh thinking, and different perspectives. And their leadership shows it. What they’re leading shows it. Once thriving teams and cultures are now dry and declining. What happened? The leader stopped asking questions. They allowed their curiosity to dry up.
Our competency rises and falls on the strength of our curiosity.
I once heard someone say this: “Interesting people have lots of interests”.
You don't need to sacrifice all those other interests, projects, and dreams on the altar of efficiency. We're no longer living in the 20th century.
Let me put it this way: you don't need to find your niche, you are a niche.
What do I mean? Those seemingly disconnected interests and passions that don't sit well on a tidy LinkedIn profile are not distractions that you need to let die; they are part of what makes you unique.
What is creativity? It's about making unexpected connections.
Here's the thing: there are some connections only you can make because only you think like you, only you have your set of skills, interests, and experiences.
It's less about finding your niche and more about discovering that you are the niche!
You will create your best work when you choose to flow in the current of your peculiar set of curiosities.
There's no one quite like you, not just in your genetics but your interests.
Ideas don't live in silos. The best ideas come from unexpected connections. You are a niche—full of a peculiar package of random passions and interests.
How might we practically discover our niche and hone it?
Here's a few ideas to start the process...
#1: Write a list of your interests (don't overthink it) and select a few of these you can water (e.g., read a book on a particular interest you have)
#2: Create space for people who think different from you and learn from how they think by asking them questions.
#3: Pursue a passion project you have put off because you or others have branded it as "unproductive".
Thanks for your time. I would love to hear your thoughts. And feel free to drop any questions you have in the chat and I'll do my best to get back to you.
