What Would They Do?

This is the story of a young boy named Matthew. Matthew lived with his parents and had a lot to learn from what life had to offer. One day, Matthew's parents thought it would be a great idea to give their son a fine dining experience as until that point Matthew only ate in the comfort of his home or local outlets. Their idea worked wonders.

Fast forward a few decades, Matthew was now happily married with a lovely daughter named Cara. Matthew discussed with his wife that it would be a great idea for Cara to experience fine dining just like the way he did when he was younger. They agreed and soon made the outing.

Since Matthew himself doesn't fine dine often, he was feeling a little bit out of place. That with the added pressure of giving Cara an experience that she will hopefully cherish and also learn from left him with a feeling of not knowing what to really do. That's when he tried to recall his experience as a young kid in a restaurant and how his parents efficiently managed the situation. He asked himself, “What would they do?”

That was the turning point. Matthew now had a blueprint of what was expected of him. Suddenly, he was comfortable being in an unfamiliar place. At the end of the evening, Cara had a good time dining at the restaurant and also learned a lot of new etiquette.

Now, let's bring this story closer to home. Just like Matthew, haven't we all been in situations where we didn't have a frame of reference? Yet, haven't we all wanted to do our best in these situations? How many of us have asked this question before — what would they do?

So how does this work?

Let me summarize this framework for you.

Step 1) Finding a needle in a haystack

Take your time to find a suitable role model. Ask yourself what traits are you looking for in your role model and what you'd want to learn from them. This is a crucial step so you must take your time with this.

Step 2) Observe, absorb, and learn

Once you've found someone you can look up to, try and observe how they work. The differentiator between them and others wouldn't necessarily be the big wins but instead, it'll be the many small things they do along the way.

If you work closely with them, that's great, you'll get a front-row seat to all the action. If not, ask them if they'd be open to mentoring you or even letting you shadow them every now and then. You'll be amazed how many doors can be opened by just asking.

Step 3) Time to level up

With all that knowledge in hand, it's now time to put it to use. Next time you're in an unfamiliar situation, ask yourself this question — what would they do? This will help you see things from a different perspective.

If you're afraid of doing the right thing when the situation is unfavorable, maybe approaching it the way your role model would, might give you the courage to do the right thing no matter what. Perhaps, biases or personal conflicts are getting in the way, and looking at things from another perspective helps bring objectivity to the scene. Maybe producing an artifact to a certain benchmark was good enough for you in the past, but you know your role model would go the extra mile in this instance and deliver something even better, resulting in you reaching for the stars.

By aiming for a higher benchmark, you'll slowly see yourself level up in the process.

Step 4) Take your training wheels off and see yourself grow

Once you're comfortable at this new baseline, take off the training wheels. From this point onward, you might not need to ask yourself this question because you'll already be ready to function at a higher level.

For a while, you might stumble a bit, and that's natural, but very soon you'll be absolutely comfortable on your own. Think about the time you learned how to ride a bicycle. Once the training wheels were taken off, you might have wobbled and may have even fallen down a couple of times, however, eventually, you would've been able to find that balance and ride your bicycle perfectly fine.

Do not forget to reflect back regularly to see your progress, the situations you've handled by yourself that you're proud of, and just appreciate the incredible efforts you've put in.

Also, this isn't a one-off process. You can repeat the steps in this framework anytime you're in a new role at any point in your career, or when you find yourself in an unfamiliar situation.

Perhaps, one day, you might be a role model for someone else.

Okay, so let's conclude this session with a quick recap:

• Step 1 was finding a needle in a haystack, in other words, finding a role model.
• Step 2 was to observe, absorb, and learn.
• Step 3 is time to level up! Ask yourself the question — what would they do?
• And finally, step 4, is to take your training wheels off and see yourself grow.

I hope you find this framework useful and I'd love to hear your thoughts about it, so feel free to add your comments. In the meantime, I've created a Miro template that captures the gist of this article and can also be used as your personal workbook. Feel free to copy the free Miro template here.

That's it! Thanks for reading.

This topic was presented at Medium Day 2023. You can watch the recording of this talk on my YouTube channel below.