Molly Graham

I wonder if I can be capable in this completely new environment.

So I took a risk, and I took the job.

Now, I'd like to say that what happened next was that it was obviously a great decision and I was immediately successful.

But actually, the first nine months on this project felt a lot more like falling off of a very steep cliff.

I had gone from feeling competent and capable in HR to feeling like an absolute idiot all the time.

I was sitting in rooms with brilliant people asking very dumb questions.

Six months into this job, I got the lowest performance rating of my entire life.

I had so many moments when all I wanted to do was run back to the safety and security of the stairs.

But about nine months in, something interesting happened.

I had to lead a meeting.

It sounds simple, but it was a big meeting.

It was a complicated debate about a nuanced part of this project.

I was successful, and I so vividly remember walking out of that meeting feeling like myself again.

I had gone from feeling like a beginner in this new environment to feeling confident and capable.

I spent another three years on this project, learning and growing, and on the other side of it, I was a completely different person.

I was offered jobs that no one would have offered me if I had stayed in HR.

That's the thing about jumping off cliffs.

It doesn't just take you a couple flights up on the stairs.

It's like a weird elevator that takes you to a whole new place.

Cliff jumps teach you who you are and what you are capable of in ways that the stairs can never.