I sometimes wonder if my ego will ever allow me to report to someone younger, or less capable than me.

Or at least less capable based on my personal assessment.

I see many colleagues of mine (both past and present), descend into a pit of unhappiness because they have direct bosses who they deem unworthy for multiple reasons. And the cause of this despair can be quiet revealing. We all have a view of a world, that we are of a certain capability, and those above us in the corporate hierarchy need to be… better!

That somehow the organization is a perfect filter for talent that flows upwards. People at the bottom might be better than their roles, but people at the top must have capabilities that are superhuman, and hence anyone above you must either be better than you, or have gotten there through some ill-gotten way!! (cue all the office gossip!!)

But the world isn’t perfect, and your organization is definitely imperfect. In any organization large enough, you’re bound to come across inherently incapable idiots at the top, that for some inexplicable reason have made it there.

Maybe where we are on the corporate hierarchy is also hugely down to luck, and luck can sometimes concentrate in certain areas, or certain people. Getting upset because someone was luckier than you is both foolish and a waste of precious time. It’s perfectly natural to feel envious, or angry, maybe even humiliated. How could I report to this idiot? What must the organization think of me?

But….

Maybe there’s another way to look at it.

I run duathlons quite often, they’re triathlons without the swim. Usually a run, followed by a bike ride, and then another run. I enjoy it, though I’m never in any danger of actually winning the event.

I’m a bad runner – so I often get overtaken at the run. And sometimes by people who don’t “look the part”. Either some petite 5 foot women, or even women who look 20 years older than me. Sometimes you see a guy whose BMI must be in the triple digits, overtake you, and you think that something must be wrong. I’m a bad runner, but I work out and exercise often, I’m lean and look like a runner, I should be smoking this FAT F&*!@#.

But the run is fair, everybody is literally carrying their own weight.

There is no explaining this away. The truth is told so plainly that there is no room for doubt. They’re better runners than you – or at the very least, they’re better runners than you in this moment.

But this moment of humiliation is not a cause for despair, it’s actually a teachable moment and an experience that no words on a blog can explain. When you are humiliated – all it means is that God is teaching you humility.

“I began to see what the great teachers of religion meant when they said that humility is the greatest of virtues,” she later wrote, “and if you can’t learn it, God will teach it to you by humiliation. Only so can a man be really great, and it was in those accommodations to necessity that Franklin Roosevelt began to approach the stature of humility and inner integrity which made him truly great.” David Brooks - Road to Character

Conversely, those you do not experience humiliation never learn this great virtue. If you always win at something, it means you’re playing in wrong league.

The best way to approach a race, is by running it on your own terms. Go in with a timing in mind, based on your ability, and try to beat yourself. No one else.

It’s a race, but you’re not racing someone with decades more experience than you, or was blessed by better genes, or has had 5 hours a week more training than you, or countless other things. You’re racing yourself.

If you get distracted and try to run with someone whose truly out of your league, you’ll end up far worse off, stick to the plan.

So maybe I will one day report to someone younger and less capable than me – and maybe that will hurt my ego. But if I focus on myself and my race, and take every lesson as a way to learn humility, I think I’ll be fine.

Run your race, leave the rest to God, and be humble all the way.