You'd think your comfort zone would feel comfortable. It's familiar for sure, but not always comfortable. We can all get complacent, bored, frustrated, a sense of inertia and still stay stuck in the same daily habits and conversations.
So what's outside our comfort zone?
What's outside our comfort zone?
Well, I guess we need to define it before we explore it. Our comfort zone is, "a psychological and emotional space where uncertainty, scarcity and vulnerability and minimized" Brene Brown. SO, it's what we know, and what we know so well it feels like breathing.
What's really interesting is the next part, "you can choose courage, or comfort, you cannot choose both". So, the growth part of our professional development often involves being seen to start down a path or an initiative that hasn't been done or existed before, or not in our spaces. And it's brave because often you truly believe that it's the right path - but you also cannot control or guarantee the outcome.
Based on my own (and my client's experiences over the past decade), and as we briefly explored above, it's also true that there is often discomfort in our comfort zone. Probably some delf-doubt about how well we will perform or be perceived, maybe hard out fear of failure. And sometimes the insidious quiet creep of inertia!
However, in all of this, there is also
OPPORTUNITY!!!!!!
Stepping outside this zone can bring uncertainty, definitely risk, and even emotional exposure. And guess where the growth sits in the discomfort! The reinvention, the bold moves, the speaking up when no one else does.
This territory, as unforgiving and brutal as it can be, is my wheelhouse.
Identifying our own areas for growth, (ideally before our teams or bosses do it for us), definitely feels challenging. But so worthwhile. Demonstrating to ourselves that we can do more than we thought - or others expected is how we grow our confidence, sense of capability and self. It's how we lead authentically.
Some of the leadership clients I’m working with right now needed support, encouragement and an action-based plan for stepping beyond their comfort zone in these areas:
- Resigning after resurrecting a company - close to burnout
- Building personal brand in a new role
- Building awareness of how a geographically distant arm of the company stays on the map and announces its value
- Expanding franchise plans beyond your city, to national or international markets
- Finding a new role in a new city, adjacent sector to current knowledge, and trying to navigate a long-distance relationship.
That said, being better than we were yesterday every day is still expansion - the changes don't need to be extensive or dramatic.
There are opportunities in every challenge - and possibly little miracles in each of these situations, as they unfold to create what quickly becomes a new reality. Then, in time, perhaps quarterly, we need to look for where the next growth spurt needs to take us!
Stuck? Need a reframe or new focus and an action plan?
If you are stuck, need to reframe your perceptions or find a more productive way to focus on building what you WANT with an action plan from an experienced, double certified leadership and life coach, let’s talk. Click this link to meet me for a coffee in Wellington city, or my home and coaching practice in Miramar or we can jump online. It's free.
vickyevans.com/book (30 minute strategy session to see if I offer what you need - or to work out what you might need!)
This month's Leadership tip:
Leadership tip:
Why pay a facilitator to run your strategy planning session or offsite when you can run your own meeting?
This month's leadership and life coaching conversations have been skewed by a last-minute request from one of my leadership clients, who joined a new firm. She suggested the need for a strategy planning day. She thought of me, I put forward a proposal and it all worked out beautifully.
We are all capable, know what we want from a meeting, why spend budget getting someone else in the run a meeting?
Here's some questions to consider:
If it's your agenda, can you be impartial?
Do you want to spend your time participating? Or making notes of key points and managing participants?
If you need agreements from participants, and there is a history of disagreement or drama, do you want a repeat of last time?
How valuable is the collective time of all the people in the room? And how can you get the best out of them, in the shortest possible time to arrive at the desired results?
Sometimes it's worth investing in an external, objective resource, ideally with some leadership or people management skills, to get the results you need.
Here is a quote from one of the partners (not my original client), when asked for feedback on having an external facilitator for a 7 hour strategy planning day,
"I thought she displayed impressive stamina in pushing us right to the end and, as a result, we made significant progress on a really ambitious agenda. I enjoyed her style and she had sound instincts as to when to intervene.
I hope you've enjoyed this edition, if you're in Wellington and would like to connect in person to learn more or ask a question, coffee's on me!
Nga mihi nui, till next time!