David L. Calhoun
-Businessman
The lust for learning is age-independent
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...and I hope I now have the self-confidence to let achievements rather than time spent in the office define our value.
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And understand that whatever else may fail you, whatever bad luck or failure may befall you, your personal integrity is always in your own hands and can never be taken from you.
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I worked for a guy named Jack Welch for twenty years at GE. He was, and is, a great mentor as much as a great leader. If I had to isolate the subject he spoke most passionately to me about, over all those years, it is that SELF CONFIDENCE is the most important, the indispensable characteristic of success, the common characteristic shared by great leaders whose talents may have varied widely in most other respects.
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Self-confidence, a quiet self-confidence not cockiness not conceit not arrogance, is the key to winning, to excelling, no matter what you do in life.
Some of you may already have the beginnings of this confidence from academic or athletic or even social success but in my experience that will not be enough to get you through a career and a life that will thrill you rather than scare or bore you.
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So, how do you get it? What is the secret to developing your own brand of self-confidence?
First, you must resolve to grow intellectually, morally, technically, and professionally every day through your entire work and family life.
You need to be absolutely paranoid about the currency of your knowledge and ask yourself every day: am I really up to speed? Or am I stagnating intellectually, faking it or even worse, falling behind? Am I still learning? Or am I just doing the same stuff on a different day or as Otis Redding sings "Sitting on the dock of the bay... watching the tide roll away"
The lust for learning is age-independent
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Another important way to build your confidence is to seek out the toughest jobs, the most daunting scientific, engineering or management challenges.
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We ask our most talented people to take on these assignments. In these situations, your purpose is clearly before you when you wake up in the morning... and there is nothing like survival to engage the mind.
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While there is nothing that builds confidence more than winning against the odds, believe it or not, losing against great odds builds it as well. Most great companies love people who take big swings even if they have to walk back to the dugout on occasion and sit down. Seek out the businesses, the technical challenges, the government projects, that others are afraid to touch. The world will soon get to know you and more important, you will get to know yourself.
Seek a real purpose. Seek to make a difference.
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Move to, or experience, a foreign country as early as you can in your career if you have not already. Go to China, to Southeast Asia, to North Africa, or to India. That is where the future is.
Know yourself and to your own self be true. You may find some day three or four years from now that you simply don't like engineering, or teaching, or architecture, or government, or the company you started with. You have little in common with the people you work with, and relative to your peers, you find your interest waning.
At that point you have to muster whatever self-confidence you have, and every bit of your courage, and make the decision to do something else with your life. It is always better sooner than later, to make that call.
Read the full commencement address »
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA
May 13, 2005
Sent in by: admin
Posted on: 03.26.2006