Where do you actually sit on the distribution curve?- Ask Nathan by How to be Second

Nathan challenges the way Seconds see competence, unpacking why a 6 out of 10 might secretly put you in the top 10%, and how knowing what “10” looks like can become a line of shame instead of a strength. Nathan and Samantha talk about how deep awareness can skew self-perception, reframing imposter syndrome as feeling “gaslit” by praise. Along the way, they rethink confidence, competition, and why understanding the curve changes everything.

Hey, this is Nathan Young, founder and author of How to be Second, and this is Ask Nathan, where I answer questions about being and growing as a second in command + a Second by identity, and tear apart myths around those ideas and other concepts. I’m practicing communicating the value of Seconds so you can do so for yourself and others, with even more clarity.

Transcript

Nathan Young 0:00

Hey, this is Nathan Young. Founder and author of How to Be Second, and this is Ask Nathan where I answer questions about being and growing as a second in command and a second by identity and tear apart myths around those ideas and other concepts. I'm practicing communicating the value of seconds, so you can do so for yourself and others with even more clarity. If you're curious and wanna know more, listen on. If you know you're ready to invest in yourself and go together, connect with us.

0:30

All right Nathan, I have a question for you. A scale of one to 10 is a pretty common tool to judge a thing or to define a thing or to give some semblance of an idea, right. I feel like the scale of one to 10 is a tough thing for Seconds. And so how can we have a better understanding of a scale of one to 10? In terms of competence specifically. To turn that scale into like a useful tool instead of a line of shame. Hmm. Yep. This has been really fun to navigate for myself, but also to start like teaching other Seconds. So very recently I was in a meeting with, we call them pod groups. So our masterminds at How to be Second are broken up into two styles right now. The first one is if you're an active second in command doing the work, and the other one is if you are a Second who is in transition looking for a new role. And so we have a mastermind group for both the mastermind groups where you're in a second in command role actively, those groups are like a little bit bigger. The in transition groups are like pods, we call them 'cause it's only two or three people with a facilitator. So it's like very intentionally, like we need to spend more time focused on, not a topic, but a person. And our meeting that we just had a couple weeks ago, we unpacked this idea a little bit. And it started off with this feeling of like, I don't know if I'm qualified. And so the conversations we were having around, like looking at job descriptions and things like that, and the people in the room were like, I don't really know if I'm qualified. You know, like I know what that means and I know that I can't do it. And I was like, Hey, we need to reframe right here. We need to recognize that we're using a scale of 10 wrong. And hilariously, we are plotting ourselves on it in a way that makes sense and we are not plotting ourselves on it, how it actually works. The end result was if you know that you are not qualified, if you understand enough about the situation to know that you are not qualified, you actually understand more about that thing than most people. So you actually are one of the most likely to be qualified if you understand enough something to disqualify yourself, which is hilarious, right? But like I know that I'm not fit to be an NBA player because I know what an NBA player looks like. This is a really simple example. Because we understand like what goes into like being an NBA player or whatever. That's 10. That's like in the realm of 10. Well I know that I'm not at 10. Hilariously, that actually puts me way ahead of most people in terms of like understanding what it actually takes to be an NBA player. I still need to develop like the muscle memory and the whatever, and there's no way I'm gonna pull any of this off now, but the fact that I actually understand the levels and I could speak to being like, well, I can't be a 10 because of, and then I could explain to you the discrepancy means I'm so far along on the bell curve, the distribution curve,. I'm answering something complex, but this is how I unpacked it and it didn't click until I basically said that for the people in the room, it didn't click until I was like, if you can actually describe to me why you're disqualified, that means you are one of the most qualified. And that was like really hard to take in. And then I explained the concept of the distribution curve. So this feels incredibly complex, but I'm just gonna draw. Two lines in the air. I feel like you have an actual drawing that we can put here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's probably a graph that's here right now. But if you can imagine this thing where there's a graph, most people go oh five, that's in the middle. So like there's a bell curve, whoop, and the bell hits the top in the middle and then comes back down 'cause that's average, right? Because out of 10 averages, five 'cause that's in the middle. And why wouldn't a bell curve be shaped where the peak in the middle? The thing about distribution of expertise is that actually the distribution curve of expertise doesn't look like this. It looks like that. That's what it looks like. It looks like everyone is at zero. Then if you're at one, you're in the 50th percentile. If you're at two, you're in the 70th percentile. If you make it to five, you're in the 90th percentile. So if you make it to five out of 10, you are better than nine other people in the whole world. Like you're in a league of your own if you are slightly above mediocre at that thing, which is impossible to think. It's wild to think, but that's how it goes. Like pick any given skill and if you are even nominally competent, you are wildly more competent than almost everyone. I chuckle because as soon as I started this conversation I was like, how would I rate myself as a pastry chef? And I came up with a number and I've been sitting here on it the whole time and I gave myself a six. Yeah. And like. I worked in the industry for 12 years. I went to college for it. I like did competitions and won gold medals. Yeah. But I would legitimately give myself a six 'cause I know what 10 is. Yes. And I'm definitely not that. And so I would hesitate with certain jobs to be like, oh, I can't do that. I'm only a six. Yes. But for most of my life, I'm a rockstar. Yeah 'cause at six out of 10, if like three Michelin stars is 10. Going from six to 10 is a lifetime feat. Going from three to six may also be a lifetime feat. And so, like most people most people, like so many people, 50% of all people are at flat zero, can't make macaroni from a box. Like one puts you at 50%. Two puts you at 70%. Six puts you in the 90th percentile. And you and I know this, we literally just watched the Winter Olympics. We watched how many people do the halfpipe skiing thing, right? How many people do we watch? A dozen. A lot yeah. Out of a dozen of them, seven of them did not complete their runs. So that's something. And then the other thing is five people in the world managed. Yes. Five out of 8 billion. That's not 1%. That's 0.0 0 0, 0. So what is 10? What is 10 is 12 people out of 8 billion people. You know what the normal person Olympics is? Wipe Out. Yes, that's right. The normal personal Olympics is Wipe Out. Second obstacle. Taken out by flying hotdog. Oh my God. For sure. Holy Moly. Even those people are pretty qualified actually. Yes, actually, most of the people in Holy Moly, like semi-professional golfers. Right. And we're watching them not be able to finish a putt putt course. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Just that if you are genuinely a six out of 10 Yeah. You're in the 90th percentile of all humans on the planet. At that thing. And so now again, do you actually know how to scope 10? But I would say that's like a Second superpower. It's the line of shame. So we perceive the gap between six and 10 as we're, we are in the 60th percentile. If we're six outta 10, we're in the 60th percentile and the difference between six and 10 is our line of shame. When I decide I wanna take on a project, the amount of research that I do before I'm willing to like commit out loud. And then whether or not I commit out loud has to do with how I've decided to handle that I won't be a 10. Yeah. Yeah. So like, from the smallest thing to like, I wanna go buy a bike. Too, I'm gonna, you know, take on this brand new video editing job, you know, whatever. And then like, can I deal with not being a 10 out loud, because now I've done enough research to know what 10 is here. We're talking about putting a shed in the backyard and I'm pretty sure that I could build a shed now so that I could go properly purchase a shed built by someone else. The scope is wild. So what I hear you saying is we need to have a better understanding of not just where we sit on the scale of 10, but where the majority of people sit on the scale of 10. And to like find our confidence in that. I think Seconds are often competing against themselves or like a perceived qualification, right? So we're always assuming that the expectation is 10. And so we're trying to be towards that expectation of 10, that the other person knows what 10 is. And so, I talk about our imposter syndrome. It is like very weird. Everybody talks about imposter syndrome, this feeling like that I'm not supposed to be there, but I actually talk about our imposter syndrome as Seconds to be more like feeling like we're gaslit. And this idea is, imposter syndrome is supposed to be like, oh, I'm not actually qualified to do this. Somebody's gonna find out that I'm a fraud. Something like 85% of people apparently experience imposter syndrome, which means it's not a syndrome, that's just the human condition. What I think is completely different about the way that Seconds experience this comes back to this idea of like knowing what 10 is. We experience it by going, I'm a six outta 10. I feel a line of shame between six and 10. I don't feel incredible about one to six, I feel a line of shame between six and 10. Everyone around me thinks I'm fucking awesome. Thinks I am the bee's knees, I am a godsend in this thing. And someday they're gonna figure out they're someone smarter than me, they're someone better than me. That's our imposter syndrome is that we're like, are they shitting me? Are they gaslighting me right now? They keep saying I'm so awesome but obviously I'm not. I mean like clearly this is 10 and I'm here and they keep saying the stuff. But the reality is you are a six out of 10 in a sea of ones, maybe a sea of threes. That's like the actual reality. 'Cause if you think about it from a competition lens, I'm not saying that's always healthy, but I am saying for just a second, if you think about it from a competition lens, like where are you on this distribution curve? And the answer is, if you're at a six outta 10, you are kicking almost everyone's ass. In any room of 10 people, there's gonna be one other person who has a shot at competing with you. That's it. I'm very competitive, so that maybe was a personal dig, but that's okay. All right. We're just gonna leave it there.

Nathan Young 11:55

Hey, it's Nathan again. If you made it to the end, that's awesome. If you have a question, shoot it over to contact @howtobesecond.com if you're glad this work exists and want it to continue existing, you can support how to be second at howtobesecond.com /support Thanks again, i'm looking forward to your next question.