Latest / The Talent Brief / What Keeps Showing Up
Transcript
- Jeff Ganter: Welcome back to the Talent Brief. I want to ask you a question. What is the most expensive decision you've ever made? Take a moment and think about it. Most people immediately think about money, a bad investment, a house, a business decision, a financial mistake. But I've come to believe the most expensive decisions we make rarely show up on a bank statement. They show up in years. Years spent in the wrong job. Years spent in the wrong relationship. Years spent pretending something was working when deep down we knew it wasn't. And that's what I want to talk about today. The cost of ignoring what keeps showing up. One of the things I've learned through recruiting, coaching, and simply paying attention to people. Is that major life disruptions rarely arrive without warning. Most of the time, the warning signs were there long before the disruption. The problem wasn't a lack of awareness. The problem was a lack of action. Through the lens of signals versus scripts, this becomes easier to understand. Signals show up early. They don't usually arrive with certainty. They arrive as discomfort, a hesitation, a loss of energy, a recurring frustration, a feeling that something isn't quite right. The signal isn't trying to tell you exactly what to do. It's simply trying to get your attention. But then the script arrives. Stay where you are. Be grateful. Don't make a mistake. Maybe things will get better. Just give it more time. And before we know it, we're no longer listening to the signal. We're negotiating with it. I've watched this happen countless times. A candidate takes a job they're not excited about because the compensation looks good. A leader ignores growing tension on their team because they don't want conflict. Someone stays in a relationship because leaving feels harder than staying. The signal was present, the script was louder, and here's the part that fascinates me. Signals tend to follow a pattern. At first they whisper. You notice something feels off. Then they nudge. The same frustration keeps appearing. The same conversations keep happening. The same thoughts keep returning. Then comes the alarm, your energy drops, your patience disappears, your stress increases, your enthusiasm fades, and eventually comes what I call reckoning. The moment when ignoring the signal becomes more painful than listening to it. For some people, that's burnout. For others, resignation. A difficult conversation, a health scare, a relationship ending, a major life change. The disruption feels sunner, but rarely is. The signal has often been speaking for months, sometimes years. We just didn't want to hear it. And before you misunderstand me, this isn't about following every feeling that crosses your mind. Signals aren't instructions, they're information. They're invitations to become curious. The challenge is that many of us have been trained to dismiss what we feel until we can prove it. We trust data, we trust logic, we trust evidence, but we often ignore the earliest form of information available to us, our own experience, the tension, the hesitation, the excitement, the relief, the feeling that keeps showing up no matter how many times we try to explain it away. And here's what I've learned. The longer we ignore a signal, the more expensive it becomes. Not because the signal gets stronger, because the consequences get bigger. They stay longer. The more energy we lose, the longer we avoid the conversation, the more resentment grows, the longer we postpone decision. The fewer options we often have. That's the real cost. Not money, time. Energy, peace of mind, opportunity. So here's my challenge for you this week. Stop asking yourself what needs to change. Instead, ask yourself what keeps showing up, what frustration, what hesitation, what conversation, what truth. What signal keeps returning that you've been trying to negotiate with instead of understand? Because chances are the thing you've been waiting to become clear already is. Until next time, this is Jeff Ganter and you've been listening to the Talent Brief. See ya soon. Bye.