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Missing Growth

Good Day to Each of You!

I noticed a theme this month with my coaching clients.  There was a little bit of frustration with the lack of professional growth within team members in support of broader organizational growth.  

You’ve likely heard the phrase “Looking for love in all the wrong places.” Well, we can also look for growth in all the wrong places.  

So with this in mind, I want to reflect on how we can instill a culture of growth in the organizations and individuals we serve.

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Cheers,

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When We Change, Things Change

So you really want your team members to grow professionally in their roles but are finding that things have plateaued a bit?  

Well, have no fear.  You can find it by doing a little soul searching with yourself as a leader.  

When we’re leading others and things go astray, our first instinct should always be to pull out the mirror and ask ourselves what we might be doing wrong, or where do we need to grow before expecting more from others.

Bad leaders go to the “window” instead of the “mirror”, look out at everyone else, and blame everyone other than themselves.  

The best leaders pull out the mirror and ask themselves: “What am I doing that is creating the current state?” Then they work on their own growth to support the team.  

“We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”

— Albert Einstein

If you want things to advance in your organization, the fastest and easiest way is to start growing yourself first.  

Inward Change = Outward Change

When you change, things will definitely start changing.

And even better, your personal and leadership growth will be like oxygen for those that you serve.  The good vibes that you are giving off will be contagious and when they see the results you are getting, they will be encouraged to make changes and grow themselves.  

The rating limiting factor of growth in all organizations is the rate of growth of the leaders in the business.  If you think you can’t grow, then why would you expect the team members you lead to believe that they can grow.  

Deep down you need to have a fundamental belief that your growth and their growth is possible and worthy of pursuit.

I believe that growth is possible for you and your team, and you are worthy.

Is your future bigger?

With the power of growth in your hands, the next key for growth is to make sure you have a bigger future in mind.  

I invite you to do a quick exercise.  Repeat after me and see how your brain reacts:

• “I can’t imagine a bigger future” VS “I can imagine a much bigger future”

• “I’m content and don’t need to grow” VS “I am happy with my work, but I know I’m capable of much more and I’m excited to grow”

• “I can’t see a path to greatness” VS “I see a clear path to greatness”

What did you notice? When you said phrases that confirm you have a bigger future in mind, did you feel differently?

When you tell yourself that you can envision a bigger future, your brain already starts to believe it.

When you give your team the autonomy and confidence to create a bigger future, they too will believe it and start to make their vision a reality.

Have you invited your team to consider a bigger future?  

Have you encouraged them to take the time to think, imagine, and envision a bigger future for themselves?  

Are you taking the time to mentor and advise them on the next steps they can take to start on that pathway to a bigger future?

Are you getting results by Commitments or Compliance?

The final consideration in making sure you are fostering a culture of growth is get everyone on the pathway to growth working toward the bigger vision.  

This sounds simple, but it is so important.

The question to answer is:

“How are you going about getting greater results in your organization?”

There are only two methods to choose from.

Pathway 1: Command and Control

Pathway 2: Enabled and Enrolled

How’s the mood?

Command and Control is detrimental to fostering a culture of growth within an organization, as noted by the Chalmers Brothers and Vinay Kumar in Language and the Pursuit of Leadership Excellence. Centralized decision-making and close supervision stifles innovation and creativity.  Team members will likely feel undervalued and disengaged due to the lack of involvement in decision-making processes.

Enabled and Enrolled is a collaborative approach that empowers employees by involving them in decision-making and fostering a sense of ownership and accountability. Leaders encourage autonomy and align employees growth with organizational goals.  This results in a motivated, engaged, and creative team —the type of team most people want to be a part of.

Avoidance Kills Growth

If you want to jumpstart personal and organizational growth there is an easy way to get started.  Reflect on what are the conversations that you aren’t having that you have been missing or avoiding.   These are the things that could lead to outsized results.

Note that some of those missing conversations are likely to be the conversations you are not having with yourself — time to pull out the mirror.

When your conversations start to change, your relationships will start the change as well.  

Companies like to write about moods, cultures, and vibes, or post them publicly to stake a claim, but what really sets the culture and defines us, are the conversations we have or don’t have and the words we use.  

Speaking of cultures of growth . . .

In my book, Unleashing Unprecedented Potential, I lay down key life lessons for growth.  Here are just three of them:

• A life can be unlived in many ways.

• Courage avoided becomes the enemy of the great.  

• It is time for anti-conformity.

Learn more in my book available in print, ebook, or on Kindle.

Quote of Note from the Past 30 Days:

"The world is an extremely unreliable critic."

-Ethan Hawke

Learn More About My Coaching with a 30 Minute Meeting (No Obligation)

Thank you for reading!  If you enjoyed this and you think someone else will, please forward this along to support their transformation. -Eric

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