Ep. 43 – Growth Indicators
In this episode, we’re diving into leadership and addressing a recurring question: how do you know if you’re on the right path when leading yourself or others? Whether you’re managing a team, coaching individuals, or pursuing personal growth, it’s crucial to identify the right indicators of progress.
Key Concepts and Indicators:
1. Aggressive Patience:
• Concept: Introduced by Ben Newman, aggressive patience combines the need for patience with proactive effort. You must be patient because success takes time, but during that time, you should be aggressively working towards your goals.
• Analogy: Just like baking a cake at the correct temperature and time is crucial, speeding up the process by increasing the temperature won’t work. Similarly, you can’t rush personal or team growth without risking failure.
2. Transfer of Beliefs:
• Concept: Effective leadership involves transferring beliefs rather than imposing them. By asking questions rather than making statements, you encourage team members to adopt and own beliefs themselves.
• Implementation: Use questions to guide individuals in discovering solutions and insights on their own, fostering independent critical thinking.
3. Mile Markers to Check Progress:
• Critical Thinking: Are team members identifying problems and solutions more effectively with less guidance? Improved critical thinking and problem-solving skills are indicators of progress.
• Exploration vs. Ignoring: Are new opportunities and challenges being explored rather than ignored? Leaders should seize opportunities for growth that arise rather than sticking rigidly to a predefined path.
• Frustration as an Indicator: Feeling frustrated can signal that you’ve seen potential but aren’t meeting it. This often happens when success has led to complacency. Use frustration to reassess and reapply successful behaviors.
4. Failure as a Learning Tool:
• Concept: Failure isn’t necessarily negative; it provides valuable lessons that success cannot teach. Learning from mistakes and applying those lessons is a critical part of growth.
• Approach: Embrace failure as a chance to learn and rally your team to extract lessons and apply them to future challenges.
Leadership involves navigating these nuances and continuously adapting. By focusing on aggressive patience, belief transfer through questioning, exploring new opportunities, and learning from failures, you can gauge and enhance your effectiveness in leading others and yourself.