TED Talks Daily - Forget the corporate ladder — winners take risks | Molly Graham (re-release)

Episode Date: September 27, 2025

Success in your career looks different for everyone — but no matter your industry, you'll need to take risks. Company and community builder Molly Graham shares three key skills to learn before jumping off the metaphorical cliff, outlining a path off the corporate ladder and into true professional and personal growth. This episode originally aired on December 3, 2024.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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For the full economic forecast, visit Calgary Economic Development.com. Feeling unsure in your career path, RBC has programs and resources to help you open the door. Discover RBC-led internships, scholarships, networking opportunities and upskilling programs designed to help you launch or further your career. At RBC, your idea of career happens here. Learn more at RBC.com slash open doors.

This episode is sponsored by Airbnb. On one of my first visits to Vancouver, I spent the morning biking around Stanley Park, just me, the trees, the seawall, and the quiet. I grabbed lunch by the harbor and thought, next time I want to come back here with my people. When you're traveling with family or friends, you want more than just a place to sleep. You want a kitchen for big pancake breakfasts, a living room where everyone can pile in and play games and laugh about the day. and space to stay up late without whispering in the dark. That's why for our next trip, I'm looking at Airbnb. The homes feel personal and thoughtful, and with guest favorites,

the most loved homes across Canada, it's easy to find a stay that's already made someone else's trip special. Now I just need to decide, is it tofino for beachwalks and seafood dinners, or a cozy cabin near Whistler with a view of the mountains? You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hume. What would it take to inspire you to take a huge leap of faith in your life, even when you're terrified? In this archive talk, company and community builder, Molly Graham, breaks down why the path to real success is often when we have to forge for ourselves and offers steps for how to gain the skills to find the opportunity needed.

to help us take the leap. I attended this talk in person at Ted's new flagship conference, TED Next, last year. Feeling the energy in that room and the crowd's reaction to every new insight and perspective was infectious, and I met so many people who were inspired by the talk as I was. Ted Next is a conference that guides you closer to the version of the future that you're meant for, and I'm so, so excited for this year's Ted Next, which is coming up on November 9th through the 11th in Atlanta, Georgia, I will be there hosting a session of talks on the last day of the conference. And if you want to experience the thrill of watching these talks in person and enjoying all of the fun and awe-inspiring activities, dinners, and immersive experiences,

you can actually join me at TED Next. It's not too late. To learn more, go to ted.com slash daily next. That's ted.com slash daily next. Hope to see you there. And now on to Molly Graham's talk. There's a lot of pressure around what it takes to build a great career. And it all comes back to this idea that you're supposed to know what you want to do. It's an idea that I like to call the stairs. Here's how the stairs go. You show up in college, and you're supposed to know what you want to major.

That major is supposed to lead you to your first job, and then you get another job, and you get promoted and promoted and promoted forever. The best part about the stairs is safety and security. It feels like you know what you need to do to get ahead. The worst part of the stairs is that it's like a weird video game that you can get stuck inside of for years. The stairs will make you feel like your self-worth,

is tied to your title or your last performance rating or your next promotion. But the truth is that the stairs are an illusion. These days, excellent careers are not built by excellent stair climbers. Said differently, one of the most important things you can get good at in your career is taking risks, or, as I like to call it, jumping off cliffs. Let me explain what I mean with a story. When I was 25, I got offered a crazy job. I had spent a couple of years climbing the stairs in human resources at Facebook.

When the leader of another department came to me and asked me to help him start a new project, doing something that I knew nothing about. It was a long-term project. It was risky, and a lot of people told me it would probably fail. I was intrigued, but I was also scared. So I talked to a bunch of different people, and I have to admit, a lot of them told me not to take it.

But there was this little voice inside me that just kept saying, I wonder. I wonder if I can be capable in this completely new environment. So I took a risk, and I took the job. Now, I'd like to say that what happened next was that it was obviously a great decision and I was immediately successful. But actually, the first nine months on this project

felt a lot more like falling off of a very steep cliff. I had gone from feeling competent and capable in HR to feeling like an absolute idiot all the time. I was sitting in rooms with brilliant people asking very dumb questions. Six months into this job, I got the lowest performance rating of my entire life.

I had so many moments when all I wanted to do was run back to the safety and security of the stairs. But about nine months in, something interesting happened. I had to lead a meeting. It sounds simple, but it was a big meeting. It was a complicated debate

about a nuanced part of this project. I was successful, and I so vividly remember walking out of that meeting, feeling like myself again. I had gone from feeling like a beginner in this new environment to feeling confident and capable. I spent another three years on this project learning and growing, and on the other side of it, I was a completely different person.

I was offered jobs that no one would have offered me if I had stayed in HR. That's the thing about jumping off cliffs. It doesn't just take you a couple flights up on the stairs. It's like a weird elevator that takes you to a whole new place. Cliff jumps teach you who you are and what you are capable of in ways that the stairs can never. To get good at jumping off cliffs, you have to get good at three things.

The first is actually jumping off the cliff. After many years of coaching people through career decisions, I know that sometimes it is just not the right time to take a risk. But I can also tell you that most people do not stay stuck on the stairs out of necessity. They stay there out of fear. The trick is to learn to tell the difference between the kind of fear that says, I'm scared I might run out of money, which you should actually listen to, and the kind of fear that says,

I'm scared I might fail, which you should take as a giant green flashing light to jump. Cliff jumps teach you what you are capable of in spite of fear. The second thing you have to get good at, in order to get good at jumping off cliffs, is surviving the fall. Jumping off a cliff is taking a giant step backwards into the land of being a beginner again.

That means it's a very big learning process. And with that comes a huge emotional roller coaster. Daily, weekly, sometimes hourly. All of my jumps have involved vacillating wildly between feeling like, oh, maybe I'm going to be good at this, and then immediately feeling like, who the hell even gave me this job in the first place? All of that is normal.

and it doesn't actually mean that anything is wrong. You have to learn to expect the roller coaster and ignore it at the same time. The most valuable mantra for me in this phase has been, give it two weeks. A lot of people will tell you to sleep on it. I can tell you most of these emotions don't go away overnight. Two weeks is a great barometer

for things that you should actually pay attention to. The third thing you have to get good at in order to get good at jumping off cliffs is becoming a professional idiot. I can tell you that this is one of my greatest strengths. I am comfortable sounding like a moron. I am great at sitting in rooms with brilliant people asking very dumb questions. But what that actually means is that I have become an extraordinary learner. My favorite phrase is, sorry if this is a stupid question, but. When you ask it that

way, everybody wants to make you feel better. They're like, no, no, that's not a dumb question. And then they would love to teach you what they know. People love being teachers. It makes them feel smart. The other thing you discover is that most stupid questions aren't. aren't actually stupid. So many people are afraid of sounding dumb that the world is littered with important questions that never got asked. Questions like, can you define that word for me?

Why are we doing this? Why are we having this meeting? Embracing being a professional idiot It often actually makes you the most valuable person in the room. There's a last thing, part of the illusion of the stairs, that becomes really obvious the more cliffs that you jump off of. And that is the idea that there is one set of stairs, one definition of success.

I have a lot of friends that have climbed up the stairs to some version of the top. a fancy title, a lot of money, fame, and then they've realized that they're miserable. One friend described becoming CEO of her company and immediately thinking, is this all there is? You know what she did next? She jumped off a professional cliff. She went from being the CEO of a marketing agency

to helping people who were dying in hospice. Success is not the same for everyone. I know that what I'm talking about isn't easy. It takes bravery to trade the known for the unknown. It takes courage to do something that might seem like a step sideways or backwards to someone else. But you will never really know who you are or what you are capable of

until you learn how to try. Thank you. That was Molly Graham speaking at TED Next 2024. We want to see you at the next TED Next. So if you want to learn more about attending in November, go to TED.com slash daily next. Ted.com slash daily next. And I hope to see you there.

If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonica, Sung Marnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faisie Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balezzo.

I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh eye. idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Calgary, also known as the Blue Sky City. We get more sunny days than anywhere in the country, but more importantly, we're the Canadian capital of Blue Sky Thinking. This is where bold ideas meet big opportunity, where dreams become reality. Whether you're building your career or scaling your business, Calgary is where what if turns into what's next.

It's possible here in Calgary, the Blue Sky City. Learn more at calgaryconomicdevelopment.com. Feeling unsure in your career path, RBC has programs and resources to help you open the door. Discover RBC-led internships, scholarships, networking opportunities, and upskilling programs designed to help you launch.

or further your career. At RBC, your idea of career happens here. Learn more at RBC.com slash open doors. Too many students are packed into overcrowded classrooms in Ontario schools, and it's hurting their ability to learn. But instead of helping our kids, the Ford government is playing politics, taking over school boards and silencing local voices.

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