Unlocking Potential: 3 Unconventional Growth Strategies
The life you want waits for self-development. Growth strategies maximize potential. Perhaps you’re so busy savoring this life that you don’t have time to grow into the next. And who has time for future opportunities when you can’t keep up with today’s challenges?
Those who make a difference trust their talent, expand their skill, and develop their strength. Growth strategies enable growth as you go. It’s too late if you feel fully equipped for the next opportunity.
3 unconventional growth strategies:
#1. Begin before you’re ready.
The most important step toward development is starting stuff.
Connect the courage to start with commitment to develop yourself. Start because you believe in developing your talent.
Try stuff. Grow as you go.
It’s too late if you feel ready.
Tip: Move toward discomfort. Say yes. Turning away from discomfort is turning from the next level.
#2. Learn from irritating people.
We learn from people who aren’t like us. Sometimes they’re irritating. Perhaps they seem too direct or they’re too politically savvy. People who seem “too much” have something to teach you.
You limit your impact by limiting the types of people you get along with.
It takes humility to work well with someone who irritates you.
Humility extends capacity.
Tip: Focus on the strengths, not the weaknesses, of people who rub you the wrong way.
#3. Lean into delay.
Projects often get delayed – you wait for approvals, other team members, or financing.
Delay develops creativity. Frustration in response to delay invites you to press harder but closes your mind to new ideas. An angry brain doesn’t have new ideas.
Delay develops grit. Open your mind to creative ideas.
Tip: Relax while pressing through delay. You can’t control outcomes. Ask if there’s another way.
Which of the above growth strategies is most relevant for you today? Why?
What does growing intentionally look like to you today?
Dig deeper:
7 Simple Steps that Accelerate Growth
An Amazingly Practical Approach to Practicing a Growth Mindset
Effective Leadership Development Plan: 5 Strategies | Vistage
Learning from irritating people spoke to me. You’re correct that our default is typically to those we feel align with us. You are also correct in saying that only learning from those people often prevents us from learning new ways of operation, thinking, and ultimately accomplishing. I heard it said that one should always endeavor to learn how someone they admire thinks – not simply what they do. Because if you learn how someone thinks, you can access what they have. I’ve always carried that with me.
Thank you for the insight, Dan!
Some of the best life-lessons I have ever learned came to me through people who irritated me. In many cases, I came to respect, leverage, and enjoy the difference. People who see what could go wrong used to irritate me. I want to get started and figure it out as we go. Sometimes that’s a good thing. But other times, changing course is frustrating to people who are working with a goal in mind that changes.
Incredibly true. Methods change, missions don’t.
My husband often says that no one is a complete waste; they can always serve as a bad example.
@jennifer if you can learn from other’s mistakes, rather than only your own, you gonna grow twice as fast 😀 That’s what my good friend says often