You Can Be More

I'm often asked a question. “How did you get into this field? What led you to be in this leadership development or coaching world, anyway?”

Well, I'll tell you part of the story.

Years ago, I was a young man getting a PhD at UCLA, and I was a young college professor. I met a very famous man named Dr. Paul Hersey. He and Ken Blanchard were the inventors of situational leadership. He was probably the highest-paid consultant in my field, in the world, at that time. So I met Dr. Hershey. He's a really very kind man to me, and I was smart about one thing: I knew my place. I knew I was not him. Well, what did I do? I said, "Look, Dr. Hershey, I'll do anything." I said, "I'll carry the bags. I'll deliver the water. Just let me sit in your class and I'll help in any way, just for the honor of sitting there."

So I started going to his programs and just sitting there, and literally organizing the things and serving coffee, whatever it took. I just did the job. Well, as fate would have it, and I was a college professor, so once I became a professor, I could teach his stuff in my classes. One day, he became something called double-booked. He was scheduled to be at two places at once. He calls me and says, "Marshall, I'm double-booked. I need help. Can you do it? Ken's not available. Can you do it?"

I said, "Well, I don't know."

He said, "I'll pay you $1,000 for a day."

Now that was over 40 years ago. I was making $15,000 a year. He was offering me $1,000 bucks for a day. You know what? I said, "Sign me up, coach. I'm going to try."

I did a program for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in New York City. They were angry when I showed up, because I was not him. These were very important people, executive vice presidents of the huge company, worth billions of dollars. At the end, I was a huge success. They loved me.

He called them up. He said, "Well, how did it go?” They said, "We were very angry when he showed up because you let us down, but he came in first place of all the speakers. Send him again."

Paul said to me, "Do you want to do this again?" I said, "Yes, sir, I'm happy to do this again. $1,000 a day verses $15,000 a year – I can add these numbers up. I'll do that again any day!"

Well, that's how I started working with Paul. And after a while, though, what happened is he called me in one day, about two or three years later, and he said, "Let me talk to you. I'm going to give you some coaching." He said, "You're making too much money, and you're too successful, and you'll never be the person you could be."

I said, "What do you mean?"

"You're not writing. You're not teaching. You're not learning new things. You're not doing research. You're just running around giving talk after talk after talk after talk after talk, and you're making money."

And he said, "You're making good money, and you have happy customers, and you can do this the rest of your life. And you'll probably make a pretty good living, and you'll have pretty happy customers."

"But," he said, "you will never be the person you could be."

That was some of the best advice I ever got. And I'd say it took me about four or five years to get out of that and to realize he was right.

I was very fortunate to meet Francis Hesselbein and Peter Drucker that inspired me to start thinking, to start writing, to be something bigger, to be something different.

This is the great danger of comfort. Think about your life. It's hard to change when you're comfortable. You're making some money, maybe family's okay, decent health, having a pretty good time. You might think, ‘Well, why should I change?’

Well, here's the reason you should change. Paul gave me a message that's one of the most important messages I have ever received in coaching, and I have had to look at every time in my life I've been coached — that helped me the most. It was the same message. What was that message? “You can be more. You can be more.”

I was working at American Express for the senior partner. Their CEO talked to me at the end. He said, "You don't need him. You don't need to be a second class citizen. You can be more."

In high school, I got bad grades in math. The teacher said, "This is ridiculous. You have a phenomenal aptitude. You can be more."

Well, here's the danger of comfort: The danger of comfort is we forget that big question – “Can I be more?” And one of the dangers of comfort is the more comfortable we are, the harder it can be to ever change. The more comfortable we are, the harder it is to ever change.

You may feel good in the short term. Life may seem fine. Here's what you do not want to have happen, and that's called regret. You don't want to look back on your life and say, "I could have been more. I could have done more."

What's your homework assignment? It's pretty simple:

What elements of your life do you feel comfortable with, where you’re kind of coasting?

Give yourself a challenge.

Can you be more?

What could you do to be more, relative to what you're doing now, and realize in many ways, the more comfortable we are, the harder it is to change.