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Be lucky, but be prepared for your good luck
By Barbara Poole
Contributing Writer
John is a lucky man. A freelance technology consultant by trade, he happened to sit next to the CEO of a fast growing biotechnology firm on a plane trip about six months ago.
Their shared passion for playing with possibilities sparked an interesting conversation.
When the plane landed, they exchanged business cards and agreed to talk further about the ideas they had generated. Six months later, John is working on a project that is beyond his wildest dreams in terms of both interesting work and fabulous compensation.
The CEO also referred John to a number of his colleagues, which resulted in a collection of contracts that will keep him busy for the next two years.
We all know stories of people who just seem to be lucky.
A chance meeting with an influential person; a single lottery ticket that is a million-dollar winner; a blind date that leads to a fairy tale ending.
It can be pretty amazing to hear tales of some of the seemingly random events that literally change the course of someone’s life for the better.
Psychologist Albert Bandura has studied the impact of chance encounters and luck on people’s personal and career lives. He writes, “Some of the most important determinants of life paths often arise through the most trivial of circumstances.”
One way of defining luck is as “an unexpected reconfiguration of events,” or things that happen in ways that were not predictable.
For some people, the notion of luck is synonymous with coincidence, serendipity or plain old-fashioned good timing.
There are several different categories of luck that can be described, as well.
First is luck by accident. This is the kind of luck that happens when you have the good fortune to be born into a stable, loving and successful family. Or when you’re walking down the sidewalk and happen to spot a $100 bill.
The nature of luck by accident is that you can’t influence it; you can only respond to it.
The second kind of luck is luck in retrospect. This is what happens when a circumstance occurs in your life and you don’t perceive it as a stroke of luck at the time. It’s not until sometime later that the significance of the event becomes apparent.
It’s sort of like luck through your rear-view mirror.
When my father enlisted in the Air Force at the age of 19, he had designs on being a fighter pilot. Unfortunately, his poor eyesight kept him grounded. They assigned him to the office that was responsible for testing potential new recruits.
That assignment sparked an interest in the field of organizational psychology and prompted him to attend college and graduate school after he was discharged. He retired 30 years later after a very rewarding career with IBM.
If you ask him today what he attributes his professional success to, he’ll tell you it was dumb luck.
Luck by opportunity is the third variety. This is what happens when you see a good thing coming and take action to be ready for it.
While luck by accident presents you with an obvious stroke of luck, luck by opportunity requires you to recognize the circumstances and make a timely response. Great investment opportunities are one of the best examples of this kind of luck.
Finally, there is luck by design. You’re looking for a new job, and you seize every opportunity to engineer the circumstances that will work in your favor.
You tell everyone you know what kind of position you have in mind. You regularly attend networking events and professional meetings. You peruse the want ads and scan Internet sites religiously. Your goal is clear, you just don’t know exactly how it will show up for you.
You plan your luck by doing everything you can to stack the odds in your favor.
So was John simply lucky when he sat next to the right person on the airplane?
Maybe. But I’ll bet his luck had something to do with his energy and enthusiasm and the way he responded to the situation.
In my next column, I’ll focus on the five skills that you can use to transform luck from being the stuff of four-leaf clovers to a strategic art.
In the meantime, see what shows up for you in the way of good fortune this week. I hope you get lucky.
Barbara Poole is a leadership and career development coach with Success Builders Inc. E-mail her at coachbarbara@successbuildersinc.com.
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