Handle Hard Better
Re-framing the progression of increasingly difficult challenges.
I was in a 1:1 with a leader recently who’s going through a tough time due to ever-growing responsibility. To make matters more difficult, they have less resources to achieve their increased scope. It feels like a common refrain these days.
The conversation reminded me of this speech from Kara Lawson, the Duke women’s basketball coach. The clip was originally shared with the Coda team by Dave King who is an incredibly insightful marketer and former CMO of Asana. I love the message that Coach Lawson shares in this video for so many reasons.
I recommend you take two minutes to watch it.
The core idea is — make yourself a person that handles hard things well. And by extension, make your team one that handles hard challenges well. I love the way she reminds her players that, “If you have a meaningful pursuit in life, it will never be easy.” This simple re-frame of daily challenges feels very true and timely, especially in a tumultuous macro-environment and ever-changing tech landscape.
For those that also grew up playing team sports, you know that great coaches do exactly what she says. When things start to get easy for an athlete or a team, the coach makes things harder – on purpose. And then what happens? Rep by rep, workout by workout, game by game, the team reaches new heights because of the intentional progression of hard challenges. And the same thing has been true in my career. When things start to feel easier, I’ve been given more responsibility, or markets change, or a new set of larger and seemingly more important issues arise. In part, I’m writing this as a perennial reminder to myself.
Things get harder. And the people that excel in their roles adapt. They get better at handling hard. And of course, you don’t have to go at it alone. Mentors, teammates, and managers are all there to support you through the hard challenges. That’s why teams exist.
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What a powerful video, thank you for sharing! So spot on!
As a former college athlete, I love that Coach Lawson didn’t make this a speech about basketball — she made it a speech about life.
I've heard a lot of coaches try to deliver the same message, but in a sports-specific way, and I've always felt like it created false expectations about life vs. sports (ex: “[this sport] is the hardest thing you’ll ever do, and you’ll need to work really hard to be successful… but everything else in life will be easy in comparison.”)
These players are fortunate to have a leader that emphasizes that it's not the *sport* that's hard, it's the pursuit of anything worth doing -- and the biggest challenges they'll face will be in areas of life they might not expect to be difficult yet.