Play the game, don't wait to be chosen

This article is authored by Sujata Deshmukh, founder, Tutul Consulting.

Two colleagues once eyed the same opportunity, a project with no clear owner, just sitting there waiting for someone to step in.

Confidence (Voices of Youth)

One spent three weeks preparing. Taking notes, reading up, thinking through what could go wrong, waiting for someone to notice her and hand her the reins. The other simply started. She sent the first email, called the first meeting, asked questions she didn't know the answers to, and made the first mistake in full view of everyone.

By the time the first one felt ready, the second was already leading the project.

This isn't a story about one being smarter or more capable. They were both good at their jobs. The difference was smaller and stranger than that. One was waiting to be chosen. The other had already decided to play and turned up on the field.

Most of us carry a version of ourselves somewhere just ahead, more qualified, more confident, more experienced. We imagine that when we become that person, we'll finally be ready for the next step. So, we wait.

Research on confidence and career advancement has found that men can be more willing to predict their own success, while women can be more likely to seek additional proof of competence before putting themselves forward. But there's a more interesting question beneath the statistics: What happens when we make proof a prerequisite for possibility?

Readiness isn't a fact waiting to be discovered. It's partly a story we tell ourselves, and some of us have simply been handed a kinder script. The real problem is that readiness rarely arrives on its own. It gets built in motion by doing the thing badly, then a little better, then well. Almost no one you admire started out ready. They started early, made mistakes, got criticised (sometimes unfairly), learned to separate useful feedback from noise, and stayed in the game long enough for readiness to catch up.

There's nothing wrong with wanting recognition. It feels good to be tapped on the shoulder and told you're ready. But building your future around the hope of being chosen is fragile. It puts your growth in someone else's hands. What if they never notice?

The people who move forward aren't necessarily the most confident in the room. Often, they're simply the ones who've stopped waiting for permission. They show up with ideas, take on the work nobody asked for, speak up instead of rehearsing what they might have said afterward. They begin behaving like someone who belongs at the next level before anyone has formally declared it.

This isn't about pretending to know what you don't. In fact, it requires the opposite--the ability to say, "I don't know this yet, but I can learn." That's not arrogance. It's agency: The belief that you can act, choose, and shape what happens next, rather than waiting for permission.

There's something of this in what Krishna teaches Arjuna. That humility isn't an invitation to shrink, but to see yourself clearly, know what you don't yet know, and still step forward. Not because you've been chosen, but because the work needs doing and you're willing to do it.

There's a particular paralysis in standing at the edge of something new, watching everyone else play before deciding to join. It looks like patience. Sometimes it's fear wearing patience's clothes.

Meanwhile, someone less experienced steps onto the field, gets things wrong in front of everyone, and learns something the observer never will: what it actually feels like to play.

As one industry leader put it: "I am nothing, but I can do anything." Not arrogance, not self-doubt--just the willingness to hold two truths at once. Trying doesn't require permission from anyone else. It only asks permission from yourself.

The cost of waiting rarely announces itself. Nobody tells you, "You missed it." It shows up slowly--in the project someone else led, the conversation someone else started, the experience you didn't get because you were waiting to feel ready enough to ask.

Over time, you begin to mistake lack of opportunity for lack of capability. That may be the most dangerous part.

Organisations need to examine this too. We say we promote on performance and potential. But often we simply promote whoever has already accumulated the most visible proof they can do the next job. Performance shows what someone has demonstrated; potential asks what they might become. Demanding proof before giving the chance to perform creates a paradox: we ask people to prove readiness for a role they've never been allowed to inhabit.

So perhaps the real question isn't ‘am I ready for the next step?’ but ‘what am I waiting for before I give myself permission to take it?’

That reassurance you're waiting for is unlikely to come. The next level will always contain something you haven't done before. That's why it's the next level.

You don't have to feel ready. You don't have to know everything. You don't even have to be chosen.

You have to choose. Step onto the field. Send the email. Raise your hand. Let yourself be seen learning. Play the game.

(The views expressed are personal)

This article is authored by Sujata Deshmukh, founder, Tutul Consulting.