Training your replacement

A few years ago I showed up for my first day of work as a contractor at Fortune 500 company (actually a company in the top 20). I was met by a man and told that my boss had been moved to Florida so I didn’t really have anyone to report to. But fear not, I he then introduced me to the person that was going to train me.

My trainer was about 5 years younger than me and not very good at hiding the fact that he wasn’t happy about this new training task of his. Well, as it turns out, the company didn’t renew his contract and hired me to take his place.

My week of training went about as well as you can imagine. To make a long story short, the young man showed up for about 6 of the scheduled 40 hours of training. I was left confused and with a supervisor over a thousand miles away that didn’t even know I existed.

If you think about it, it kinda made sense. There were two people and one position. There just wasn’t enough room for both of us. There was a “winner” and a “loser.”

We tend to think that life works like that in general. We think that there has to be a winner and loser in everything we do. Moms compete with other moms over what preschool they send their kids to. Guys compete with other guys over who has the faster car. We compete over who has the nicest house, or the most expensive watch, or the most well-mannered kids.

And all of that posturing and competition is based on a false assumption.

If you live in the United States, then you know what abundance is. I’m not implying that everyone is rich or even that everyone has enough to live on. I’m talking about a mindset. Even some of the poorest people in our nation have cell phones and access to computers and transportation. Are there those that don’t? Of course! But the vast majority of our country lives in abundance.

The competition mindset is one of scarcity. It assumes that there isn’t enough to go around. It assumes that there are more people than positions. It assumes that there is a winner and a loser. It’s simply not true for much of the modern world.

But the alternative to that mindset of scarcity? The alternative is beautiful. It’s a world where people are eager to help each other because they realize that we are better when our neighbor is better. It’s a world where we want competition for our business because the competition drives the entire market to be better. A mindset of abundance is one that leads us to tell our customers the truth and teach people everything that we know because we aren’t scared that someone is going to take the one remaining job.

I urge you to think about this simple question as you interact with people:

“What can I do right now that would help him or her get better?”

That is a mindset of abundance. It’s a mindset of always trying to drive the people around you to get better.

The unintended side effect of helping everyone around you get better is that you will get better in the process without even trying!