A very ambitious young woman entered the world of investment banking where the hours are long and decisions are made in nanoseconds with either great outcomes or catastrophic shambles. She was determined to make a lot of money for her firm and mint for your nest.

She had a boss that is regarded as the most insatiable ball buster known to man in the investment banking business, but in no time he took to her like a moth to bright white light.

She always found a way to make close the deal, she always brought in the cheese with a cherry on top!

Soon her colleagues across the group spanning five continents knew about the new upstart who seemed to smash every target in her way. Midway through her probation, she was offered a supervisory position ahead of colleagues who had been in the business longer than she had lived and then everything started looking bleak for her.

Her targets were no longer about her individual effort but the entire team’s performance was tied around her neck. Slowly she started realizing the her ambition engine was very different from that of her colleagues. Many nights she drove herself home wondering how she would get the best out of her colleagues and hit the group target.

A couple of months later her boss who adored her started demanding to see numbers on the board. Her numbers as usual were awesome but her target in this hight octane, rapid attrition environment meant that everyone on her team must deliver great numbers.

She would cry herself to sleep thinking her colleagues were batting below average just to make her fail as a team leader. She contemplated taking a less senior role abroad to get away from the pressure of leading a team that disdained her abilities and regarded her as teacher’s pet. She updated her CV many times and even booked an interview in New York but at the last minute cancelled. What changed? You may ask.

She had stumbled on a quote that read “When God want’s you to grow, he makes things uncomfortable”. Her religious mind started poring over scriptures to find a correlation between scripture and philosophy. That night she couldn’t sleep and in the early hours she had her very own Eureka moment above the din of generators in her gated community on a very typical Ghanaian Dumsor night.

Bam! The words jumped at her, “Give and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together shall men give unto your bosom”.

That morning at work she read an email that requested an appraisal of her team within a week with hers to follow a week later. She calls a meeting and requested that all team members submit their most difficult leads for discussion.

She scheduled meetings and attended them all with each team member and in the process stressed herself to the point of breaking out in spots on her well cared face.

By the end of her week and appraisal of her team members, she had discovered that the team was capable but needed an investment of their own... A champion to stand with them and encourage them to go forward.

Her team posted a 105% to target and that continued throughout a year that was regarded as the most turbulent in the investment banking circles. She was crowned employee of the year with pay rise and a promotion. In a conversation with my now very successful and celebrated friend, I learnt 5 things!

1. You must treat every challenge as a privilege and a responsibility.

2. You must beat the devil on your current level to advance.

3. Opportunities may be hard to find so go out on a limb and create your own. Afterall, you’ll either win or learn how not to fail.

4. Give off what you want in others. It’s amazing the transformational effect of being selfless.

5. It’s ok to cry, but keep looking for a way even through the tears.

Remember that a child when teething will encounter a very uncomfortable period but when the teeth are fully formed, an ability to eat solid food becomes second nature.

Whatever your level, find the devil, drill it, beat it and climb, for the race is not for the swift but for them that endure to the end.

Life is a series of growing pains!

Go Forward and Make Rain.

Shalom

I am Nhyira Addo, The Rainmaker.