Chapter Eight: Think of the Possibilities!

CAN I GIVE YOU one more character quality for building collaboration—one that has saved many a group from certain peril and vast quantities of unnecessary pain? This fourth and final practice, that of seeing possibilities, is the ability to envision a better reality than the one you’re presently in.

The word possibilities conjures all sorts of good things, doesn’t it? To think of possibilities is to think of what is available, what is likely, what is imaginable, what is to come. Possibilities encompass the hoped for, the longed for, the optimistic. So let’s begin with optimism.

Optimism is predisposition to hold on to hope in the face of life’s instability; to keep saying yes in a no-plagued world.

General Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, astutely describes the quality of optimism as a “force multiplier.”[1] That is, a leader’s enthusiasm, hopefulness, and confidence will multiply as it radiates outward through an organization.

The opposite is also true: A leader’s passivity, despair, and insecurity will multiply as it radiates through an organization. Most likely, at some point in your life, you’ve been affected by both. Whether it’s from a manager, an in-law, a parent, a friend, or a retail clerk, you know what it’s like to be influenced by someone’s presence and perspective—spanning the full spectrum from anticipation and eagerness to misery, anguish, and gloom. These attitudes and perspectives will either be a breath of fresh air and a shot in the arm, or they’ll get on us like secondhand smoke or a piece of gum on the bottom of your shoe.

That’s why optimism is so important. If we want to harness the power we’ve been given; if we want to be a blessing to those with whom we collaborate, we simply must make friends with optimism—the ability to see, and believe, that good things are ahead.

How optimistic are you? Let’s look at a few scenarios that will help you gauge your current state of mind.

SCENARIO 1: You decide to dramatically change your eating patterns—to get healthier, to lose weight, to feel more energetic, whatever your motivation may be. You mark off a thirty-day period and are amazed by how well you’re sticking to the plan the first three days. On day four, while you’re out running errands, minding your own business, you discover that the local bakery is having an anniversary celebration: free doughnut holes! The scent of cinnamon and sugar wafts through the air and assaults your consciousness. Suddenly, you can’t resist. You enjoy not one or two, but four doughnut holes. Afterward, do you

SCENARIO 2: You’re in sales for a large manufacturing firm. Your manager stops by your office to congratulate you on the fantastic quarter you’ve had. “Number one for the entire team!” she gushes, just before telling you what your sizable commission check will likely be. Do you

SCENARIO 3: You bump into a friend you haven’t seen in quite some time. She asks, “So how are you doing? What’s new in your world?” Reflexively, you find yourself answering with

If you found yourself gravitating toward the first answer in any of the above scenarios, you may have a bit of work to do to develop an optimistic view of yourself and your life. Still, I hope you’ll take heart. There is hope for even a career pessimist to come around. Stick with me, and see if your optimism doesn’t go up a few clicks on the dial by the time this chapter concludes.

———

I have always emphasized the importance of optimism. If a person cannot (or will not) choose to believe that better days will surely dawn, he or she simply cannot move ahead. Optimism is the fuel that allows problem solvers to see things through to the end; however, optimism on its own cannot get us very far. There is a second ingredient necessary for seeing possibilities—namely, a healthy dose of clear-eyed realism. Realism sees what is true of things today. Optimism sees what could be better. We need both.

Years ago, while working in the strategy division at AT&T, I employed a simple—but not easy—tool to help people get the realism/optimism balance right. I called it “current state/future state,” and I have used it countless times since. Want to give it a try?

The practice of seeing possibilities begins with a problem rearing its head. Admittedly, this is the easiest part of the drill. We face problems on every side just getting out of bed in the morning. But the problems we’re hoping to prioritize are those that affect more than just us, more than just our isolated corner of the world. So, that lock of gray hair that appeared from nowhere? The blinking Check Engine light on your car? The resentment you’ve been feeling lately about having to cook dinner every night? Though these may, in fact, be problems for you, they’re not exactly the kind I mean.

Instead, let’s focus our attention on the broader issues that are hindering meaningful progress for you and those in your sphere. What relational fractures are gobbling precious energy and time? What habits aren’t serving your group well? Which systems are derailing your family’s ability to have quality time? How is a lack of passion hamstringing your volunteer team? How often is your department scrambling to complete projects? Why do you and your spouse seem unable to abide by the budget you’ve set? What is keeping your teenager and his or her friends stuck in a spiral of apathy? How might you inspire your girls’-night-out friends to pursue a cause beyond yourselves?

You may not know the exact problems you’re supposed to solve during this season, but I’m willing to bet you’re aware of certain stress points. You know when communication is strained. You know when deadlines aren’t being met. You know where breakdowns are occurring. You know when things aren’t working right. For part one of this assessment, all I’m asking you to do is write down your current state. When you stop, look, and listen, what problems bubble up? Don’t work to solve these problems just yet; simply get them logged.

Grab a piece of paper, and jot down the key problems plaguing you today. As you list your problems, remember to choose ones that you can actually affect. For example, don’t write down “world hunger.” Instead, remember Austin Perine, the little boy whose problem was the homeless people he saw in his neighborhood who needed something to eat.

What issues are keeping you up at night? What dilemmas are causing you worry or grief? In case you haven’t put the pieces together yet, I’m asking you to define your current state—reality as it stands today.

Now comes the fun part: applying optimism to start seeing possibilities.

Take one of the problems on your current-state list: What would your dream scenario be? If you could alter reality to create a totally different state of affairs, what would that ideal include?

Let me start with a silly, trivial example to get things rolling. A few months ago, my colleague Casey got a new dog. I should mention that I love dogs and that I’m the proud owner of two adorable dogs myself. I should further mention that Casey’s new dog, a Jack Russell mix named Jake, was adopted from a shelter that took him in after he had been mistreated or abused. Naturally, we all wanted to extend grace to sweet little Jake. We wanted him to feel safe and accepted and loved.

Early on, Casey decided to bring Jake to work with her because she was worried he’d freak out if left on his own. His past negative experiences mixed with long hours without attention would probably result in an unfortunate situation, and no one wanted that. So, into the office came Jake each day, which meant he was around . . . a lot.

All was well with Jake in our midst, except for one little thing. He had trouble discerning the proper location for relieving himself—meaning he didn’t know it should be exclusively outdoors. Everyone in the office was soon aware of the problem; but until we could envision the future state we desired, there was only grunting and grumbling and rage. We knew Jake was trainable. We knew that better (drier) days would surely dawn. We just had to believe and keep moving toward our goal.

The future state my colleagues and I envisioned centered on Jake’s taking care of business outdoors—predictably I believe was the word we used. As soon as we declared our goal, we began to establish steps to get us there.

We all agreed that, for the first few months anyway, someone needed to take Jake outside every hour, until he grew accustomed to his new routine. Whenever he accomplished what we all longed for him to accomplish, we would shower him with verbal praise and tasty treats. The telltale signs of an impending accident were circulated so that disasters could be averted. As we developed effective strategies, each one inched us closer to our goal. And today I can honestly say that the issue of where Jake relieves himself never crosses my mind. That’s how predictable dear Jake has become. What once was a dream is now a present reality, and we’re better than we were before.

Clearly, with Jake, the future state was obvious, so little mental effort was required to envision a solution. But depending on the problem you’re trying to solve, you may need more imagination, ingenuity, and plain old faith. I’m not suggesting that problems will be easy or quick to solve. Take the long view. Slow and steady wins every race. Be patient. You may need to pull back for a season, to daydream, to ponder, to look, listen, or think.

Let me show you a more substantive example of what I mean.

Recently, another of my colleagues, Jeffrey, faced a dilemma of far greater consequence than our situation with Jake the dog. Jeffrey is a deep thinker with a quick wit, an expansive heart, and a hearty laugh. He’s delightful to be around. As our director of coaching, Jeffrey is well-versed in all our problem-solving tools. This came in handy when a young man he knows (I’ll call him Greg) encountered some problems. Jeffrey knew right where to start.

Greg had long dreamed of going to culinary school, so it was a big deal when, upon graduation from high school, he was accepted to ICC, the International Culinary Center in New York City. His parents coughed up tens of thousands of dollars for the young man to turn his dream into reality; but as we’ve seen, such destination-minded thinking often leaves us longing for more.

Greg arrived in New York and registered for classes, but he soon realized he had made a mistake. He missed the opportunity to take one class altogether and had to drop a second class because he hadn’t taken the prerequisite yet. When his first-year schedule was found lacking by the school’s administrators, they issued him his first “ding.”

Soon thereafter, he was caught drinking in the dorm—his second ding.

What he didn’t know but was about to find out the hard way was that at a highly selective school like ICC, it’s two dings and you’re out. Greg was expelled from the program of his dreams, and the fees he had paid were not refundable. He was furious. His parents were furious. Now what was he supposed to do?

Grudgingly, he packed up his dorm room, headed back to his parents’ house, and got a job waiting tables. If he couldn’t attend culinary school, at least he could do something in the food-service industry. Before long, however, living at home became too much to bear, and he decided to move out of his parents’ house. He had recently started dating a young woman, and she agreed to let him move in with her.

Jeffrey said that this is where things really began to careen downhill.

“Greg quit his job at the restaurant because he didn’t think he was making enough money. But at least it was a job. At least it was a paycheck. He had nowhere else to go!”

He had been paying rent to his girlfriend, so when the paychecks stopped coming in, she kicked him out.

“Eventually, I had trouble reaching him,” Jeffrey said, “and then I found out why. His girlfriend had bought his phone for him—and she kept it for herself when they broke up.”

So now Greg had no culinary-school degree, no job, no place to live, and no phone. Things were not looking good.

It would have been easy for Jeffrey to leave this kid to find his own way; but knowing that so much of unlocking our own potential involves helping others unlock theirs (a topic we’ll cover more fully in chapter 10), Jeffrey ran toward Greg instead of running away.

“His current state was obvious to both of us,” Jeffrey said. “He was hanging out with the wrong crowd, blowing his time and money on stuff that could wreck his life, and believing things about himself that were complete and utter lies. We both agreed on his current state.

“The future state? That was tougher to pin down. I could see a future for this kid that he couldn’t yet see for himself. All he saw was further struggle, further disappointment, further hopelessness, further pain. But I knew he was talented. I knew he had gifts. I knew he could build a valuable life for himself. I knew he could win. As far as I was concerned, my role was to bring into view the future state that I knew for sure could be his.”

Jeffrey began having weekly conversations with Greg (who, fortunately, had bought a new phone), during which he prompted the young man to articulate his desired future state.

“I simply kept asking questions,” Jeffrey said, which by now you know I think is a pretty fantastic place to start.

Jeffrey would ask him, “The dynamics you’re facing—are they what you hoped would be true of you at this stage in your life?”

Greg would moan and say, “No.”

“What dynamics would you like to be true for you, then?”

Greg didn’t have an immediate answer for that.

When new drama entered the equation, Jeffrey asked Greg, “How’s that working for you?”

When Greg’s friends would drag him away from becoming the man he said he wanted to be, Jeffrey would ask, “What types of friends do you want to attract, and what are the implications of that for the person you want to become?”

It took a long time, but eventually Greg went from borrowing Jeffrey’s beliefs about his future to buying into those beliefs himself.

“We’re still hard at work,” Jeffrey recently told me. “And we will be for quite some time. But I’m convinced that as Greg and I keep speaking aloud his desired future state and he assumes the task of becoming the kind of person for whom that future state is a reality, he’ll get there.”

I believe Jeffrey is right. Regardless of what a person—any person—has or hasn’t done, simply planting his or her feet on the path begins to unlock potential.

———

Allow me to give you one more example of the power of the current state/future state tool. We begin with one man, a deeply troubled neighborhood, and a beloved sport he hoped would save the day.

Part of our country’s unfortunate history is that, for many decades, we enacted laws that prohibited ethnic minorities from living in certain areas. Real-estate maps were redlined, with boundaries fixed on the zip codes where African Americans and Latinos, for example, could purchase homes. In the 1920s, if you were a black woman or man living in Los Angeles, California’s most populous city, the only place you would be approved for home purchase was either in Watts, an independent city south of downtown, or in the north part of South Central LA, the broader region of Los Angeles north and west of Watts.

Over the next twenty-five years, fueled in part by President Franklin Roosevelt’s ban on racial discrimination in defense-industry and government hiring during World War II, a flood of minorities looking for weapons-manufacturing and ship-building jobs moved into the LA Basin, turning the South Central area into an overcrowded ghetto.

By 1940, the Ku Klux Klan had already infiltrated most of the country’s urban centers, including Los Angeles. Minority gangs began to form to fight back against white intimidation. In 1965, with race tensions having reached fever pitch, a routine stop by a white police officer of a black man suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol sparked the infamous Watts riot, which lasted three full days and claimed thirty-four lives. Fearing for their safety, many of the few remaining whites in South Central fled, leaving a raw, angry, hurting community behind.

According to gang expert Alex Alonso, who is now a professor of Chicano and Latino studies at Cal State Long Beach, “The end of the 1960s was the last chapter of the political, social, and civil rights movement by black groups in LA, and a turning point away from the development of positive black identity in the city.”[2]

Researchers with the National Gang Center note that “black Los Angeles youth searching for a new identity began to mobilize as street groups. This process also widened the base of black gangs into two camps, Crips and Bloods . . . particularly in the public housing projects.”[3] The surge in gang activity all but ensured that “available positive role models were kept to a minimum and that the role models who were around belonged to the street.”[4]

The increase in gang membership carved new lines of segregation in an already segregated area and led to an increase in gang violence. Then, in the early 1980s, came crack cocaine, which was like pouring gasoline on a raging fire. For those who were innocent bystanders to the trend, a quiet sense of desperation set in.

The scene was undeniably bleak. And yet hope was on its way.

In 1985, Oris Smiley—everyone calls him Dino—was approached by Alvin Willis, his longtime mentor.

“Dino,” Willis said, “you’re ready. I’m turning the Drew over to you.”

“The Drew” was a six-team summer basketball league that Willis had started in 1973 to keep young boys off the streets of South Central LA during the months when school was not in session. Willis was a teacher at Charles Drew Junior High on Compton Avenue, and he noticed that misbehavior rose disproportionately during the summertime, when kids had too much idle time on their hands. He was impressed by the level of participation in those early years, but now it was time to take the league to a new level. He knew that Dino Smiley was the guy who could do it, given his shared passion for the community and its kids.

Up to that point, Dino had been the scorekeeper for the league. Most every weekend, he could be found perched atop a tall aluminum ladder in the middle school’s gym, for hours at a time, keeping careful watch on the games in progress below.

Dino loved the Drew, and back when he was in eighth grade he’d seen a problem.

“We had guys, but no uniforms,” he said with a laugh during an interview I did with him recently. “So I went to the local plumbing store and said, ‘You should sponsor our boys’ jerseys.’ I must have sounded more confident than I felt, because they said okay. Two weeks later, every player had his own jersey, with Drew League printed proudly on the front.”

Dino was still in his twenties when Mr. Willis handed things over to him, but he was up to the challenge. Shortly after he took over, the league grew from six teams to ten, and then from ten to sixteen, and from sixteen to twenty-eight, where it stands today, some forty-five years after its quiet start.

Year after year, May through August, guys would come together on the hardwood—five games on Saturday, five games on Sunday—and invest their energies in something more productive than defending their turf. As Dino recounted the evolution of the Drew League, I wanted to stand and cheer. Such vision. Such passion. Such commitment. This guy is absolutely the real deal.

“In the eighties, things were pretty rough,” Dino said. “Corner boys were still battling it out with anyone from a rival gang who had the nerve to step onto their street. Our boys were getting shot—sometimes killed. Something had to change.”

Mustering courage he wasn’t sure he possessed, Dino went to the leaders of every nearby gang and begged them for a reprieve.

“Just on the weekends,” he said, “while our guys are playing . . . can you stop with the killing, please?”

Astoundingly, the gang leaders said yes. Still today, for fifteen weeks every year, the corner of Compton and Fireside is a relatively safe place to be.

Over time, news about the Drew began to spread. Not only did local streetball notables want in on the action, but collegiate athletes and NBA stars began showing up as well. A favorite memory of Dino’s is the time he told Laker legend Kobe Bryant that he couldn’t play.

It was 2011, during an NBA lockout, and Kobe was looking for some live play. He called Dino—which was easy for anyone to do, since the man published his personal cell-phone number on the Drew’s website—and said he wanted to come down for the championship game, the biggest game of the season for Drew participants.

Given Kobe Bryant’s stature in professional basketball, you might assume that Dino told him, “Yes! Please! Come play!” But that’s not what happened.

“We’d be pleased to have you, you know that,” Dino told Kobe. “But no can do on the playing time. You know the rules. Gotta suit up at least once during the summertime to get minutes in the big game. Can’t tilt the championship game, I’m afraid. But you come watch. You sit with me.”

Kobe went, joining the ranks of such basketball luminaries as LeBron James, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Baron Davis, J. R. Smith, Paul Pierce, Klay Thompson, Paul George, and countless other top players who have participated in the Drew League over the years.

I’m not at all a basketball person, but I am a possibilities person, and Dino Smiley embodies possibilities about as faithfully as anyone I’ve ever known.

“Carly, I didn’t care what happened with the basketball games,” Dino said. “I just wanted to keep our kids alive.”[5]

The possibility that Dino envisioned? It was that the boys he regarded as surrogate sons would grow into responsible men someday. The summer league was simply a strategy. The objective was life and peace in his neighborhood.

———

Let me draw your attention to three key aspects of Dino’s story that I believe can be implemented by anyone, anywhere—like you—who is impact-hungry today.

Whenever you find yourself squaring up against a problem you’re determined to solve and yet you’re tempted to lose heart—either because the issues seem so big, your ability to address them seems so small, or both—I hope you’ll recall these three reminders, typified by Dino from the Drew League: suspend judgment, speak truth, and seek hope.

The landscape that Dino surveyed back in 1985 was a terribly grim scene. Yet Dino chose to preserve his buoyancy and keep his belief intact by refusing to focus on the negative. It would have been easy to write off the community and set up shop somewhere else, where life was quieter, easier, and saner—and who would have blamed him? Instead, Dino dug in. Although acknowledging that the situation was daunting, he believed it could change. He chose to see the possibilities instead of wallowing in the way things were. And I have to believe that his willingness to suspend judgment is at least part of what saw him through.

At the same time, Dino was anything but naive about the gravity of the situation. As he rallied other passionate people to help him expand the league that Mr. Willis had founded, they all understood how high the stakes were: Kids were dying left and right. He was realistic—clear-eyed, you might say—about the gang activity in the area. He was tuned in to the truth. But he didn’t give that truth more power than it deserved; rather, he spoke truth and then forged ahead.

Finally, in Dino’s story, I see the beautiful capacity to keep seeking hope. This is a trademark of optimism: When our current belief starts to waver, we borrow belief from a past success. All those years that Dino was sitting atop that ladder, keeping track of games and cheering guys on, he was racking up belief that the league was working, that a new culture was taking hold. When the going got tough—as it always does—and things became stressful, Dino had a decision to make: Would he hand over his power to fleeting circumstances, or would he show up, step up, and lead?

By now, you know how things panned out for him, and for the thousands of men whose lives he affected because he made the choice to stand strong. My question for you is this: Will you commit to doing the same?

Behavioral scientist Daniel Pink says that asking “Why?” can lead to understanding; but asking “Why not?” is what leads to breakthrough. This is the “suspending judgment” phase we looked at in Dino Smiley’s story.

Why not safe space instead of a gang-infested neighborhood?

Why not a group of young men that the rest of the world has written off becoming world famous for their basketball league?

Asking “Why not?” will help you to suspend judgment while you address your current state and future state issues. Here are a few questions to help you balance realism and optimism. First, on the side of realism:

  1. What really is the problem I’m facing?
  2. Who else is affected by this problem?
  3. What are the intricacies and nuances involved?
  4. What have I learned from evaluating it from all perspectives?
  5. What obstacles might keep us from flourishing?
  6. What will delay us, deter us, or demoralize us along the way?

And then, on the optimism side of the equation:

  1. What would make it better?
  2. Who will be empowered, blessed, and positively affected if things are better?
  3. What might that look and feel like?
  4. What is needed to achieve this better state?
  5. Who else can contribute and support us?
  6. What will accelerate and sustain our progress and success?

I hope you’ll take whatever time you need to think through this part of the journey, so that you and your fellow problem solvers aren’t caught off guard later on. “Go slow to go fast,” I often remind my coaching clients. Give yourself room to thoroughly assess reality on the front end and it will help keep a spirit of optimism alive as you work. Less reactivity equals more stamina to persevere. Being confident of the solution you’re seeking increases the likelihood that it will be found.

———

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said, “Life is not a fist. Life is an open hand waiting for some other hand to enter it . . . into friendship.”[6] What a magnificent truth about perspective. And about engagement. And about hope. When you have witnessed and survived the largest genocide in history, it takes enormous courage and strength of will to choose optimism instead of pessimism.

Right alongside the practice of seeing possibilities is the unflappable belief that no matter how rough the streets, no matter how loud the cries, no matter how deep the pain, no matter how dark the night, the power that resides inside you is greater than the power of the circumstances that threaten your joy.