Stretching outside your comfort zone is critical to grow as a leader

 


 
 

 

 

 

 

Your comfort zone is unique to you. What might feel risky for one person, may not for you – and the other way around.

 Learning and growth happen outside your comfort zone. There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable – the problem is when you don’t want to venture beyond the usual behaviors.

Leaving your comfort zone doesn't mean doing crazy things but being willing to experiment with new mindsets and behaviors. From making minor changes to your routines to trying new experiences – to learn you must let go of control and familiarity.
 
Your comfort zone is an established pattern of thinking that is “recorded” in your brain via neural pathways. Neural pathways are connections in your brain that are created each time you learn something new or have a new experience.

Neural pathways are strengthened each time you experience that same situation over and over again. Donald Hebb, a Canadian neuropsychologist known for his work in the field of associative learning famously said,

"Neurons that fire together, wire together."

The more you experience something, or the more you think about something, the stronger those neural pathways become. This repetition creates your habits, your thought patterns, and your comfort zone.

Think you have big goals that require a big comfort zone stretch? Several years ago, I read an article in Wired magazine about a long-distance runner named Dean Karnazes.

Get this:

• He ran fifty marathons in fifty states on fifty consecutive days.
• He once ran 350 miles in three days—without stopping and with no sleep.
• He’s run the Badwater Ultra Marathon eleven times. It starts in Death Valley, 250 feet below sea level and concludes, 135 miles later, halfway up Mt. Witney, at 8,360 feet. He won the race in 2004 on his fifth attempt.
• He runs 100 to 170 miles a week.
• He couldn’t find time to run 4-6 hours a day, so he began sleeping less. He currently sleeps four hours a night.
• His resting heart rate is 39 beat per minute!
  

In another interview in Outside magazine, Dean makes an important point that many of us have forgotten:

Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think that if we had every comfort available to us, we’d be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. And now we’re so comfortable we’re miserable. There’s little real struggle in our lives. Little sense of adventure. We get in a car, we get in an elevator, it all comes pretty easy. What I’ve found is that I’m never more alive than when I pushing hard and I’m in pain, and I’m struggling for high achievement, and in that struggle I think there’s a magic.

This rings true for me. I think there are three reasons why we should embrace discomfort by stretching outside our comfort zone, whether we deliberately choose it, or it simply happens to us.

• Comfort is overrated. It doesn’t lead to happiness. It makes us lazy—and forgetful. It often leads to self-absorption, boredom, and discontent.
• Discomfort is a catalyst for growth. It makes us yearn for something more. It forces us to change, stretch, and adapt.
• Discomfort is a sign we’re making progress. You’ve heard the expression, “no pain, no gain.” It’s true! When you push yourself to grow, you will experience discomfort.
  

A few years ago, I started a daily practice of meditation. It sounded easy enough. Boy, was I wrong! It has proven to be incredibly challenging to sit for thirty minutes straight. But that’s the very reason I value it. I feel like I’m making progress by doing something that isn’t easy for me.

The more you deliberately stretch outside your comfort zone, the more comfortable you will become with doing so. Basically, if you can be at ease outside the confines of what's familiar, you'll feel more confident in your ability to handle what life throws at you.

Famed psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “One can choose safety or growth. Growth must be chosen again and again. Fear must overcome again and again. Life is a series of choices. Success and fulfillment in life is making the growth choice every time.”

The bottom line is this: we can either be comfortable and stagnate or stretch ourselves—become uncomfortable—and grow. We may think that comfort leads to happiness. It doesn’t. Happiness comes from growth and feeling like we're making progress.

(Check out our post on the Progress Principle)

“Get out and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe not much happens of any significance when we’re in our comfort zone.”
                           --Bob Parson, Digital Entrepreneur

To your greater success and happiness,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees, please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile: 323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

How to Handle Complacent People

 

 

 

 

Leaders sometimes have to deal with complacent people — those people who are seemingly happy with their current position or status or job performance.

Gather leaders and coaches for any length of time and this challenge is likely to come up. Inherent in the challenge and the questions they ask about those behaviors is a sense of unhappiness and cynicism and frustration at not knowing what to do with “those people.”

If you identify with any of these situations and feelings, or even if you wonder how you would deal with complacent behaviors, read on — this article may surprise you, and it will definitely help you.

Labeling and Assumptions

First, a definition.

According to Dictionary.com, complacent is “pleased, esp. with oneself or one’s merits, advantages, situation, etc., often without awareness of some potential danger or defect; self-satisfied.”

As you can see from this definition, being complacent is an internal feeling. That implies that as leaders we are more likely to be assuming someone is complacent, rather than “knowing” it.

In my experience labeling someone as complacent is often making a tacit assumption that they aren’t willing to make a change; hence our frustration and concern!

The first key to coaching someone whose behaviors lead you to believe they are complacent is to avoid labeling as such. Next, through conversation begin to understand how they really are feeling and what they really are thinking.

Additionally, it is important to ask yourself: “why is the behavior a problem?”

Is he completing his work? Is he meeting job expectations? Clearly if behaviors aren’t meeting job expectations it’s different than if someone is meeting job requirements, but you just want them to “do more” or “be more proactive.”

Once you have determined that in fact there are job requirements or expectations not being met, you can begin to influence, coach and persuade. If not, perhaps your best course of action might be to let the behavior go as it is more of your perception than their job performance.

Five Strategies

Identify dis-satisfiers.

If people seem (or are) complacent, they are in their comfort zone. When any of us are comfortable, there is little likelihood that we will want to change. Help people see that things are not perfect. Help them recognize that while things seem “fine” there are ways things could be better. This will be achieved most effectively by asking the Back Pocket questions to help them recognize that however good things seem, they could be better.

Help them find a vision.

Once people are wishing things to be (even a little bit) better, you set the stage for creating the picture of a more desirable future. You may have ideas about what the future looks like – a future with them using or developing new skills, or behaving in new ways.

Help them create this picture, with a clear connection that as they reach this vision, their situation, however good it feels now, can be even better.

Identify impacts.

How will the new future be better? How will it make them happier, more secure, more confident and more? Help them see all the consequences for the changes. While you may need to show negative consequences for not changing, don’t focus all of your attention on impacts in this way. The positive reasons to change hopefully are even more powerful than the negative consequences of not changing.

Help them build a plan.

With a disrupted comfort zone, a picture of a new future and a clear sense of why, complacency is on its way to being a memory. Help them craft a plan for getting from where they are to where they now have decided they want to be.

Let it go, or let them go. (Always check with  chain of command before taking any action)

If after patience and effort you are not able to help them build a plan with a commitment to work the plan you must do one of two things. You must either let go of their behavior, recognizing you have done all you can do (if the performance is “fine” but not what you’d prefer), or you must let go of them — if their performance isn’t up to the standards required for the job. Don’t take either of these steps too soon, but recognize this may be the eventual end of the story.

These steps will help you understand their perspective and behavior and help you influence them to make changes that they understand to be in their best interest.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees, please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile: 323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Multitasking is A Myth

 

 

 

 

  

 

"If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one."  

                                                                –Irish proverb

Multititasking is really switchtasking. Things happen so quickly people don’t realize the cost their paying. It doesn’t matter that someone believes they were doing the same thing at the same time. They weren’t. Instead, their brain was jumping between the two tasks.

A Real Life Example

 A supervisor named George is mentally locked on writing an email, crafting a well-thought reply. Enter one of his direct reports, Sally.

Switch. Eager to finish the email, George glanced up for a moment to give her his attention—which should be enough…so he thought. Switch.

But Sally needed an answer yesterday and demanded George’s full attention. So, George tried to listen, but in the back of his mind, George was still thinking about the unfinished email and other work he was in a hurry to get done. Switch.

Realizing he missed everything Sally has just said, and that it clearly was important to her, George asked her to repeat the question. Switch.

Frustrated, Sally repeated herself, this time with George fully tuning into her needs. In the end, George gave her a rushed answer. And then turned his attention back to his computer.

Because of the interruption and the break in his concentration, it took George a few moments to find his spot in the email. Then George had to refocus his train of thought again. It took a moment to get there, but eventually he did and got back to his work. Switch and switch again.

George will claim that he got everything done. He probably did but in a highly unproductive way. Switchtasking is costly, inefficient, and ineffective.

·    Studies show that on average, a person loses about 28 percent of their workday because of interruptions (A Microsoft study revealed that the average person interrupts themselves every forty seconds!) and inefficiencies. Multitasking—or more accurately, switchtasking—is one of the biggest culprits.  

                                                                 --University of Washington

     Organizations that reduced multitasking realized an average of a 58.8% improvement in productivity.          —Realization Technologies. 

     "I’m speaking to you and checking my iPhone at the same time, I’m doing neither. This is why our society is frazzled; this misconception that we can consciously do more than one thing at a time effectively.”   

                                                                  –Deepak Chopra

 To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.