But What Can You Do?

I have a good friend who is VP of Human Resources for a well-known company. We used to have lunch together about once per month to catch up and talk about leadership together. He told me how he made it to his current position and it was a story that permanently inspired me. It all revolved around a question, “but what can he do?”

My friend was going to school and mowed the lawn of an executive. He impressed the executive enough that he took my friend to lunch with his CEO and asked that he show up in his lawn-mowing clothes – jeans and a t-shirt. “I want you to look like a poor college student who mows lawns.”

During the course of their lunch, the executive really talked up my friend’s abilities for quite sometime until the CEO stopped him and asked rather point blank, “but what can you do?” My friend’s answer positioned him as a plant manager in training and he quickly moved up the later to a VP position. His leadership gifts inspire me still.

I said in a previous post that passion is better. Still true, but abilities matter too. You can talk about your experiences and your education, but at the end of the interview, the client or potential boss really has one burning question, “but what can you do?” Are you prepared to answer? And can you share it in two or three sentences without flinching? Ability matters – not as much as passion – but it’s a close second.