By Lily Kelly-Radford

A buzzword is born!

It came in one of those off-the-clock chats with a client. Her millennial daughter had been visiting…

“She comes home from New York into our home and wants to use every bedroom and every sitting room in the house. She just spreads out – because it’s there! As if to say ‘There’s opportunity here – to invite my friends over’…”

“She can use every room in a two-and-a-half-day weekend like I haven’t used for a month!”

My observation? She’s a capacity person. She sees capacity everywhere she goes.

And that’s a good thing – mostly.

In the workplace when someone is performing, but the capacity person knows they can do better, they want to push them to fill their capacity and deliver their maximum. The other person – who may be perfectly competent in every way – may benefit or they may not want to fill all the capacity. You know…keep some reserves.

And this is where a capacity person becomes at odds with others.

There really is “something about” capacity people. They sense that there is capacity, there’s room, there’s opportunity. Then, they demand more from themselves and everyone else.

Like any strength, it can be overplayed. Being an effective capacity person requires self-awareness of potential downsides.

What it’s like to be on the receiving end of that behavior? When others operate at full capacity, the way capacity people do it, if something goes wrong, there’s no more capacity for them to deal with anything else. They’ve used it all up there – completely spent.

Not everyone wants to, or needs to, operate at full throttle.

This puzzles capacity people. Why wouldn’t you want to have so much capacity? You could do so much. You can also write a book! Why are you not writing a book or something?

You can be a capacity person and extend and extend. But you shouldn’t expect other people to clean up after you because you’re going forward extending somewhere else, as if you’ve done this little project, and you’re off to the next one.

People often react to capacity people with jealousy, because capacity people are so capable in doing a lot of things. This can result in shame from others who think that they’re not doing more because capacity people make their high output look easy.

Have you ever asked, “Why am I not doing all of these things?” when you’re around capacity people?

It can make you jealous or it can make you pick up your game – or, sometimes, it can make you depressed.

Capacity people can achieve great things. But they need to understand when to go for the capacity and when you should pace yourself.

Dial it back or pour it on? Think of it like a “superpower for good” and assess every context for how much is needed, so it’s never for “not-so-good.”

Photo: Adobe Stock