Multiple potentials

It is election season, and already, some sports fans are shaking their heads at the sight of present and former athletes jumping into the political arena. We are often concerned when someone who is gifted in one thing shifts to something else. For example, there is a public skepticism about how well athletes like Manny Pacquiao and about a dozen or so past and present basketball players who declared their intentions to run for public office. People feel that they are simply banking on their name recognition, and not their actual capability to do the job. That may or may not be true. As usual, this writer is loath to generalize.

As early as 25 years ago, fresh graduates began to stay in one workplace for shorter and shorter periods before moving on to better-paying or more fulfilling jobs. At the time, they usually spent five years at one job before quitting and trying something else. Lately, that trend has reached disturbing proportions, since a huge percentage of the workforce seems to be staying around for just two years. Some even escape without paying the “training fees” they are required to reimburse or let the company recover from them by staying longer. This restlessness is often misinterpreted as the younger or millennial generation being soft and unable to take the stresses of work. But it may be an indication that the old notions of staying in one place all your life are outdated in a time when everything moves at high speed. 

In her book “Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams”, career coach and counselor Barbara Sher first coined the term “scanner” in reference to people who have more than one meaningful pursuit in life. She spotted the shortening cycle of work and career life, and the search for independence in choosing what to do for a living. Scanners learn something quickly, do well at it, then almost as quickly lose interest and move on to something else, essentially starting from scratch over and over again. Meanwhile, the new whiz kid of career coaching, Emilie Wapnick, calls these people “multipotentialites”, combining the words multiple and potential. 

“I began to notice this pattern in myself where I would become interested in an area and I would dive in, become all-consumed, and I’d get to be pretty good at whatever it was, and then I would hit this point where I’d start to get bored,” Wapnick shared at a talk in Oregon in October. “And usually I would try and persist anyway, because I had already devoted so much time and energy and sometimes money into this field. But eventually this sense of boredom, this feeling of, like, yeah, I got this, this isn’t challenging anymore – it would get to be too much. And I would have to let it go.”

To be fair, this is not a new concept. Greek poets and philosophers used to compare foxes and groundhogs, a reference to the former’s penchant for roaming while hunting, and the latter’s habit of simply keeping its head down and building its life around one place. Time was when a big dream of many working-class Filipinos (based largely on the American model) was to stay in one company for 20 to 30 years, work their way up the ranks, then retire on top with a big fat severance package of pension. A typical example would be the proverbial Japanese Everyman, the good soldier who stayed loyal to a fault to one corporation. But with the economic crunch in the US and the collapse of many of its traditionally stable financial institutions, that may not be a reliable dream of the future. Millions of people lost their savings, thus shaking the very foundation of the great American dream.

One of the concepts that we teach in corporate trainings is the concept of autonomy and belonging. Belonging used to mean simply following orders. Today, it means being able to perform your functions with minimal supervision, sports is a great illustrator of this. You have a play or gameplan, but if there are other opportunities that present themselves, you are free to improvise. The degree to which you can win depends, of course, on the coach’s system, creators like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant are not typical of the players in this range, and therefore needed to be handled differently. But multipotentialites need more than autonomy. They have a greater need for meaning. If they don’t see the purpose of what they’re doing, they walk. 

Today, it is extremely rare, say, for a basketball player to stay with one team throughout his entire career. The last player that comes to mind is Alvin Patrimonio, who spent close to two decades with the Purefoods franchise. There are several reasons for this, competition chief among them. But it is also because athletes precisely do not see the value in staying in one place simply for loyalty’s sake, they also want to explore their other potentials, evolve in their roles, and even find a team whose mother  company will allow them to grow outside and beyond basketball.

Many people were critical of Shaquille O’Neal’s dabbling in entertainment. The words “dabbler” and “jack of all trades” have earned a negative connotation. But after early financial misadventures, Shaq now owns hundreds of burger restaurants, dozens of pretzel shops, a shopping mall, car washes, fitness centers and other businesses. He is primarily known now as a television analyst, but also produces his own content, and also has several, lucrative product endorsements. When you look at the scale of all these potentialities he has allowed himself to explore, it appears he has mastered many fields. And he also has a Master’s degree, and a doctorate. Dr. Shaq.

There is, however, one caveat to doing many things: you should have a certain level of proficiency in all of them. That is the main issue with sports personalities transitioning into politics. But once again, this may be more the fault of the beholder than the beheld. Sometimes, it’s easy to dismiss or lump everyone together. It’s easy to criticize. And sometimes, whether we admit it or not, it may also be out of envy. Manny Pacquiao was elected to the House of Representatives. He was drafted into the PBA. Other athletes have been senators, congressmen, mayors,  councilors, barangay captains. Then when many of them are reelected, we wonder why, or simply say the electorate is uneducated. But truly, some of the athletes-politicians are doing good work, which we will discover if we look deeper. It is understandable that attendance is important for a job like a legislator, but it also doesn’t tell the whole story. 

The ultimate message is that you don’t have to be just one thing, but on the other hand, you do have a responsibility to learn whatever job you take on next. And you should have the sense to leave the job if you screw it up. Of course, that can also be wishful thinking. Or part of the process of searching for your other potentialities.