636: Maturity Assessment Checklist: How To See Maturity BEFORE Hiring

For six years Ashley and I coordinated the meeting of a group of young men who met weekly during the school year.  Some weeks there were four, and others there were sixteen.  All between 15 and 18 years of age and all at different stages of maturity.   We walked these young men through a variety of discussions, situations, and scenarios and even adapted a five stage growth pyramid for each to understand where they were at in their level of maturity.   For these young men we relayed the identification of those stages as  Boy Adolescent Man Mentor Patriarch Upon introduction many of the young men in our group presumed that age was the entry point to each stage.  Turn 13 and you become an adolescent.  Turn 18 and you become a man. One astute young man asked a resonating question around our communal fire pit, “at what age do you become a mentor?” It was akin to asking, “at what year do you become an expert in your field?” In 1964 US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was providing an opinion on the use of obscenity in the public square  in the State of Ohio’s  case vs. Jacobellis who had been reprimanded for showing what was considered by some to be an obscene movie.   Justice Stewart explains, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…” We will certainly do our best to layout helpful marks of maturity within a civil society, and yet maturity can be validated in part under the mantra of “I know it when I see it.” My response to the young man asking at what age you scale the stages of manhood?  I asked, “have you ever seen a 19 year old boy walking around in a 54 year old body?” He understood a primary principle of maturity: Maturity equals maturity. Age equals age. You can have age without maturity. You can have some maturity without age. You cannot have full maturity without the combination of age and wisdom. Wisdom is a cocktail of time, understanding, trial, error, learning, teaching, consideration and circumspect, humility, confidence, and curiosity. Wisdom gone right is shrewd and helpful. Wisdom corrupted is deception and gaslighting. The secret to wisdom is this…GO PURSUE WISDOM! How do we know what to pursue, or what a wise person, a mature person even looks like? Here are NINE marks of maturation that we can pursue ourselves and begin looking for in others.  These marks do not prove full maturity, but simply a pursuit of maturity at some particular mile marker on the highway.   First, a maturing person is someone who has written and defined principles (mission, values) for their life. We all like to think that writing things down and defining “purpose” in our lives is good for the self-help section at Barnes and Noble, but in real life we can never find time for that. The maturing person makes time to articulate the things that drive them and the things they value.  Our family has a drive to create space and be a light through adventure, wisdom, and time around the table. One of the more sacred spots in our day to day is any table we find ourselves at together whether it be our dinner table in Bluffton, a bleacher seat in Winston-Salem, a tray table in row 31 seat C, D, and E somewhere over the Atlantic, or a restaurant table in Cinque Terre.  The table is an indicator for us to limit distractions, share peaks and pits, discuss a wide range of recent events and future plans, and to play 3 rounds of a twitchy card game. It’s written, we talk about it, and it has become a habit at this point. If you don’t write them down, they do not exist.  Second, the maturing person invests a bulk of time into a recurring “thing” (Reps):  Distraction has become chaos’ tool of choice in our modern battle to fight.  Desire is rarely the enemy that keeps us from progressing to expert status.  We have a desire to fly planes, learn a language, love yoga, travel to Siberia, or hike the Cascades.   Distraction then hijacks desire in mid-flight rendering us aloof and frustrated not being able to achieve that thing we know would satisfy and re-energize.   While at the Chick Fil A mothership in Peachtree City, GA we heard a recurring idiom that for a while felt like classic corporate goofiness and then over time was sobered up to a well trained conviction; “Full Time…Best Effort”.   It’s one thing to “be at work” all day vs. “working all day”.   While we are at work all day, distraction begins hovering like sand gnats on a warm May afternoon at a southern coastal ball field.  It nips, bites, frustrates, until we either leave, or take measures to battle against.   Three hours at work is not the same as working for three straight hours.  One gives the allusion of maturity.  The other implements boundaries which lead to maturity and exponential value to you and the people you impact. When you mature to give your full time…best effort, choosing not to work in a short series of fits and starts, you are setting the stage for a mass accrual of reps in a given task or skillset providing you a valuable path to expertise and value. Immaturity always welcomes distraction.   The third mark of a maturing person reveals a sober judgment and intuition spending time looking at a “thing” from multiple angles.   For most of my life I didn’t “get” art.  People would sit and look, observe, think, contemplate, review, change angles and keep looking. “What are they looking at?”, I would think with disdain and arrogance. Perspective is a hallmark in appreciating great art.  Today I would accept an invitation into just about any display of artistic creation.  One of my favorite art displays is the small, dark Museo Leonardo Da Vinci.  A two minute walk from the infamous Duomo in Florence is a unique museum displaying recreations of da Vinci’s drawings.   Da Vinci was a prolific illustrator drawing fine details of human anatomy, mechanical machinery, and novel tools.  Many of these drawings were never manufactured into tangible instruments.  The da Vinci museum displays actual (in some cases life size) creations of da Vinci’s drawings like a tank, a flying machine and others.  These tools in essence jump off the page into real life and the museum gives you a unique opportunity to look at aa Vinci’s mind and work from multiple angles and perspectives.  What might have seemed hideous or impractical on paper is now meaningful and unique when built in real life.   Maturity is making the time to walk around and see the various angles of a thing not in hopes of proving your opinion, but instead to reformulate your convictions with great understanding.   The fourth mark of a maturing person is situational awareness; the ability to “read the room” knowing who is in the room, when to act and how to act. Walk down a terminal in most major airports and he will be nearby, the guy with the bluetooth headset talking as if Nine Inch Nails are playing a live set at the next gate down and he’s got to make sure the person on the other end can hear everything he has to say. Your response, “READ THE ROOM”. Solitude is helpful, isolation less so.  We (yes, even introverts) live in a communal society with shared spaces.  It serves us well to read the room and respond in kind to the dynamics of that room.   If people are tired, frustrated, jet lagged, in a hurry, delayed, short-fused and in need of space and peace, probably best not to add volume to that chaos.  Read the room. If people are energized, fired up, ready to storm the hill and score the winning touchdown, probably best not to reveal your inner Eeyore.  Read the room. There is a time and place for everything and the maturing person is willing to reveal their “true self” in moments where their true self will be invited and welcomed.   Read the room. A hallmark of situational awareness is the ALL important SELF-awareness.  Spending time discovering the inner workings of yourself will open up a world of insight and aha’s as to why you are the way you are, do the things you do, and act the way you act. Maturity in self-awareness never uses what you have discovered as a crutch to excuse preference.  “Well, I’m an ‘S’ on the DISC so you shouldn’t ask me to do that.”  Or, “I have no Tenacity on the Working Genius so you can’t expect me to have that done so quickly.” Profiles and enneagram numbers are helpful; these are third party tools that give us objective insight into the intangible parts of our personality.  As you learn, the mature person asks, “what are the things that I naturally love to contribute, and what are the things that I need to be aware that I am not as prone to so I can push through those areas when needed?” Maturing people realize that Jim Rohn was right, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”  In fact, you are likely the average of the five books you read, the five foods you eat, the five songs you listen to, and the five things you spend your money on. A new rhetorical question that we are going to begin adding to our hiring process is this, “if I asked you to setup a dinner with the five people you spend the most time with, would you be excited for me to meet with them?” Life and business necessarily intersect.  Who you are out there, is who you will be in here.   Run with chaos out there, and you will want to burn the building down here.  Run with wisdom out there, and you will want to build up the culture in here.   Who are the five people you spend the most time with?  Would I enjoy dinner with them? The sixth element of a maturing person is they feel compelled by gratitude to reinvest the wisdom they have received into others.  This reinvestment is less about waiting until you have hit a threshold of wisdom to start giving that wisdom away, and more about immediately teaching the wisdom you have to the people you interact with immediately. Did you learn something today?  Use it today and teach it today. Seneca, the Roman Philosopher said, “while we teach, we learn”.   Benjamin Franklin said, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” In just a few minutes, I will involve you in an exercise that will help teach the things I’m learning so that we can all grow and perpetuate the wisdom to our co-workers, partners, families, and friends.   The maturing person is always teaching out of the gratitude they have for being taught.  The seventh mark of a maturing person are the stress-tests they’ve endured.   Our family loves to hike, to walk along trails in the woods with no distractions and to simply look around and take it all in…to see what is out there and allow our minds to voyage into peaceful places.   My son has a bazaar tradition when we are hiking in the woods, if he sees a tree he thinks is dead or dying he will work to “truck the tree”.  He’ll give it a few pushes casually to see if the tree is vulnerable and off balance; to see if it has some “give”. After a few pushes he then makes a highly scientific judgment call to determine that tree’s “truckability”.  Can he make that tree fall if he were to deliver a linebacker like form tackle to its trunk?  Mis-judge the tree and the tree wins whilst you get an Uber ride to the Orthopaedics office.  Judge correctly and you feel like a dominant predator of the woods knocking down trees with your bare shoulders.   The maturing person has been pushed, pressed, and had tested through a variety of trials and tests both personally and professionally.  It is unreasonable and naive to think that you will live life on Lake Placid, where your waters will always be smooth and your skies will always be blue. That testing is a gift because it breeds and develops endurance.  Endurance then works itself into hope, into a light at the end of a tunnel that is opportunity, life, conviction, belief, and satisfaction.  It is said that having hope will never disappoint.   The maturing person will be aware of their response when they are rejected, or when they win. Notice the maturing person may or may not respond perfectly to rejection or to winning, but they are aware of their response and the impact that response has on themselves and on others around them. Rejection is fertile ground for shame.  Brene Brown has been studying shame for decades and describes shame as an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” Each of us has unique shame triggers, events that happen that open the door for that intensely painful feeling because our flaws have been revealed. You could have just received a stern response, a cross glance, a critique on your work, a roll of the eyes in response to your contribution, or a harsh pushback from a client.   Maybe your Dad only calls when he needs something or your Mom still treats you like you were 8 years old. Maturity is not never feeling rejection.  Maturity is being aware of how you feel when you are rejected and then intentionally using emotional tools to grow from that rejection instead of self-medicating with rage, anger, return shame, substances, or loneliness.  Victory and winning are equally as important.  When you win, how do you win?  Maturity will always lead with humility, joy, satisfaction, and gratitude.  Maturity will never thrive in an environment of arrogance, stand alone pride, gaslighting, and trash talking. Humility is the currency of the wise.  On par with self-awareness, Shakespeare “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” We are told it is the “foolish things of the world that are used to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” A ninth mark of a maturing person is how they respond to authority, to coaching, and to the less fortunate. The coaches you remember are the coaches that were hard, the ones who demanded more, and who were convinced that you had more to give. Dr. David Crutchley was a professor of mine in graduate school.  I studied more for his classes than I did anyone else’s in the history of my education.  I never scored above a B minus on any exam or paper I turned into him. Frustrated I tried to reason with him as to why I earned higher grades.  His response echoed, “I would rather you get a C in my class and walk away having truly learned, than for you to ace my class and to learn nothing.” A life of 5.0’s and 10 out of 10’s on everything is a life that is ultimately not helpful towards resilience.   Karen Arnold, a researcher who followed 81 High School Valedictorians came to an eye-opening conclusion: “Even though most (valedictorians) are strong occupational achievers, the great majority of former high school valedictorians do not appear headed for the very top of adult achievement arenas….Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries . . . they typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.” This is not license to not work hard, to not grow in diligence, and to not give great effort.  This is motivation to seek and appreciate hard coaching, serious feedback, and honest insight.   Remember, the launching point into a life of wisdom is to simply GO LOOKING FOR IT.  If you find someone willing to do the hard, emotionally taxing work of giving you honest feedback, GO SIT WITH THEM and go get wisdom.   Wisdom will be the road sign to maturity.