Opening Doors for Others

The most joyful moment in my career was not a successful game launch, winning an award, or getting a promotion. It was helping a colleague, and now close friend, find fulfillment and confidence in their career.

I will call them Alex.

Alex confided in me that they were unhappy in their role and thinking about leaving because they did not see a future at our organization. They had been hired to do something they were very capable of doing, but had fallen out of love with.

Losing Alex would have been devastating to the organization. Beyond being a great person, they had incredible soft skills: self-motivation, kindness, intelligence, empathy, an awareness of when to ask for help and when to take charge, and an innate desire to support others. Those are skills you cannot teach, at least not easily.

What Alex did not have was a framework for naming the role they wanted, or for understanding how to make that transition.

So we started by talking about what they truly wanted to be doing. Not in terms of titles, but in terms of actions. What kind of work gave them energy? Where did they naturally take ownership? What did they want to be responsible for? The goal was to identify a role that fit the shape of the work they were already reaching toward.

As it turned out, the role Alex was describing aligned almost perfectly with an open growth path at the company. Their immediate reaction was excitement, followed quickly by the worry that they did not know how to do that job.

That part was solvable. Hard skills are much easier to teach than the qualities Alex already had.

We started by having Alex shadow me and other people in the company who were already doing the kind of work they wanted to move into. Slowly, they took on more responsibility. Over time, Alex transitioned from being handed tasks to defining tasks for themselves and others.

That was six years ago this month. Today, they are far better in that role than I ever was.

I take no credit for how skilled Alex became. That is completely theirs. All I did was put a name to what they wanted to do and crack the door open.

Sometimes that is all it takes.

Hiring the right people is incredibly challenging, but it is equally important, if not more important, to foster an environment that encourages the right people to stay. If you are in a position to do so, open doors for others as early and as often as you can.