The Importance of Being Imagined

PBS recently re-aired a wonderful documentary about The Beatles’ early years.

In one segment, Paul McCartney held that it wasn’t until manager Brian Epstein came aboard that the band took off.   He said “Brian saw potential in us that we didn’t see in ourselves.”  McCartney continued to attribute Epstein with having had “the vision to take a scrappy Liverpool band to worldwide fame.”

This reminded me of another documentary I saw a few years ago about Woody Allen’s early years.   I already knew that he started his career writing jokes for Sid Caesar, and then became a stand-up comic, before moving on to world fame as an auteur filmmaker.  What I didn’t know was how badly he initially performed as a stand-up.   He was so terrified of being in front of an audience that he regularly vomited before going on stage.

Apparently, he didn’t even want to pursue a stand-up career.  It was his managers, Joffe and Rollins, who saw potential in Allen.   They encouraged him, worked with him, helped him develop his act and thus his confidence.   They turned raw potential into a polished performance.   And it didn’t stop there.  Joffe and Rollins also pushed Allen to write and direct his own movies.   They were instrumental in raising money, convincing backers that he was a capable director, even though he had zero experience, having never directed a movie.  Joffe and Rollins, like Brian Epstein, saw potential.   And that made all the difference.

Joffe and Rollins, like Brian Epstein, imagined their client.

These two scenarios got me thinking about how important it is to have someone imagine you, see your promise, even if, no, especially if, you don’t see it in yourself.

There’s a great myth about talent, and by extension, success.  The myth holds that talent emerges full-blown, potent and great.   But the reality has a lot more to do with how hard work and perseverance get rewarded when someone with influence sees potential and then acts on it by opening doors.   Success, in any endeavor, is dependent on someone imagining you as someone you may not yet be, but could be.

If you are a scrappy band or a stand-up comic or an assistant manager at Burger King, someone has to imagine that hidden promise lies within you before another stage of success is possible.   And for that to happen, you have to be taken seriously.   There has to be a complete societal infrastructure – family, school, church, etc. — that envisions you as having standing as a full human being.   For most of history, that vision has been the province of men.

If The Beatles were a girl band, would there have been anyone to hear their music?    If Woody Allen was a woman, would there be a connected, influential manager duo spending valuable time developing her act and then encouraging her to direct movies?

These examples are from two generations ago so it’s tempting to pretend this is a thing of the past.  After all, women now participate in the work force in a way that would’ve been unimaginable two generations ago, right?   Not so fast.  The opportunity to work is not the same as the opportunities that gets put into motion when one’s promise is imagined.

Women continue to be judged on their performance while men are judged on both their performance and their potential.   The most obvious consequences are found in promotion inequity and pay inequity.   But there are many less obvious consequences.   And that’s the crux of the matter.   It is harder to see what has never been seen.

The world runs on a male narrative.   It’s as old as civilization.   Imagining male talent is easy.   We live buried within a twenty-five-hundred year heritage, going all the way back to the Ancients.  We’re on the lookout for male talent, receptive to it, encouraging it whether in the arts, the sciences, business, politics or technology.   The expectation of male talent has reaped enormous benefits for all of humankind.   Imagine how much richer our lives would be if seeing potential – which would demand a radical enlargement of imagination — were given to the entire species, and not just half.