Sitting in my office one day I noticed a student technician struggling with a repair at the workbench. I inquired about what was going on and he showed me a laptop he was working to open with a stripped screw he couldn’t remove. He was trying a typically recommended “trick” where you place a rubber band over the screw head and then use the screw driver to remove the screw. The idea being that the rubberband will provide enough grip to create the torque needed to loosen the screw. I shared with the tech that in my decades of experience I have never found that method to work. Instead, I walked to my office and came back with a hammer. A hammer?! Yep, you read that right. 

 

A student walked into the workbench while I was “hammering the screw” and on initial observation this would look like I didn’t know how to use the tools correctly. However, a few minutes later I successfully removed the screw. Using the hammer and a flat head screw driver, I created a new indentation in the screw head that allowed me to generate enough torque to remove the screw.  What looked at a quick glance to be inexperience or ignorance was, in fact, my experience of knowing when to adapt my use of the tools (in a non-traditional, unobvious way) to solve a problem.

 

I don’t share this story to help people remove stripped screws (although if you ever run into this, give it a try–-you might surprise yourself). Rather, I aim to highlight the value of experience. When you have experience you can fail and recover. You can do the hard thing and survive. You can do the crazy thing (like hammer a screwdriver) and make it work. You can do these things because you have done them before and you know you can. You have evidence in your past body of work that gives you confidence in your abilities. When you lack experience you fear the consequences of failure or tackling the challenging task because you don’t know if you can do it or what will happen if you can’t.

 

Beyond confidence, experience also allows you to build towards mastery. Striving for mastery through continuous improvement is a key driver of motivation, as highlighted by Daniel Pink. When we are working towards improving and making progress on something important we are as a result more motivated to continue. Achieving greater mastery also allows us to know when to break the rules. Famous poet T.S. Eliot said, “It is only the master who can break the rules with impunity.” Without knowing why you’re hammering a screwdriver into a screw, you’re likely going to break the laptop. The deep knowledge and understanding that comes with seeking mastery enables us to adapt to challenges in seemingly unconventional ways, often appearing to “break the rules.” “The rules” often tend to be guiding principles that we put in place to teach beginners what should be done most of the time. Mastery teaches us the exceptions and the nuanced circumstances that call for a different approach. 

 

What if you’re a new leader or early in your career and lack that depth of experience? We all have to start somewhere. Waiting passively for experience to build is slow. Accelerating your growth requires three deliberate habits: 1) Spotting the opportunity, 2) Taking the Leap, and 3) Encoding the Lessons. 

 

1. Spotting the Opportunity

Opportunity rarely comes knocking. More often, it sits disguised as strange and unusual problems, or the challenging tasks that others shy away from. They often come in the shape of:

• Stretch Initiatives: A work project that pushes you to the limits of your current technical or leadership frontier.
• Side/Personal Projects: A self-directed initiative that pairs a topic you love with a skill you want to test.
• Peer Mentorship: Stepping up to help a less experienced teammate navigate a task you’ve already mastered.

Each of these presents a chance for you to challenge, grow or refine your skills. Spend some time learning what this might look like in your organization or what opportunities for personal projects or volunteer work could stretch or strengthen your desired skills. Offering to help where you can add value, even if it’s outside your regular work, can demonstrate initiative and provide a chance to gain valuable experience. Even if you struggle and need help getting through them, these situations present great learning opportunities. 

 

You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) do all your searching alone. Let the right people know that you’re open to opportunities. It helps having someone who will bring your name into the room where decisions are being made and recommend or connect you to the types of projects you’re seeking. Share with your colleagues, mentors, or supervisor the areas in which you want to develop and explore. Building your reputation for taking initiative and delivering quality work will combine with the network effect to expand your pathways over time. The more people who are looking for you, the greater surface area you create for those opportunities to stick to. 

 

2. Taking the Leap

Taking the leap means stepping into discomfort. Growth happens where you are most uncomfortable and that discomfort is a signal that there is something to learn. You have to be willing to take the risk you might fail knowing that either way you will learn. There’s no shortcut here. You can build a support system of friends and colleagues who will help nudge and encourage you, but in the end only you can take the leap. 

 

3. Encoding the Lessons

Finally, an opportunity only becomes experience if we learn from it. Seek feedback during and at the end of your work. Ask specific questions that will help you evaluate your performance on the skills you’re aiming to develop. Take time to reflect on how things went. What went well? What could have been better? And most importantly, what will you do differently next time? Armed with this information, you can now encode the learnings of this experience and build upon it for the future. 

 

Experience can’t just be something that happens to us. We have to actively construct it. It’s how we build confidence, how we grow, and how we advance. Sometimes we need a screwdriver, sometimes we need a hammer, and sometimes we just might need both, but you’ll never know which to reach for without experience.