At work and in life we want to grow constantly and never stop. But how do we do that?
note: state in my explanations refers to a position/state of performance of a given person
What is an example of a growth mindset?
A person who is able to grow behaves as follows: They find themselves in a state where they believe they can be better or achieve more - they have reached a reasonable level of proficiency in their current state and can see that there is further progress possible. They assess the difference between their current state and a vision of a more desirable state, being brutally honest about their own shortcomings, and feel both the self-confidence for taking on this journey to a higher state as well as the conviction to start this journey. They then derive the steps they can/need to take to get to this state and start in the next moment to make small steps into the envisioned direction. During their journey, they will trip and some of their actions will lead them to a less optimal state or in the wrong direction. Because there are few external signifiers that indicate these moments before harm has been done, they continuously seek to assess their progress through rigorous self-assessment and seeking external feedback, only to re-derive new/adjusted actions. This means, they are also obsessed to get better feedback from their surroundings, by probing their peers deeply and in various ways, forcing true feedback to arise.
At some point they will arrive at the desired state and will have the initial feeling again. This restarts the cycle.
Continuous growth is the never-ending iteration of this cycle. How soon someone generates the respective feedback of his progress, derives new actions, defines a new, higher vision then determines how quickly someone is able to grow.
What is personal growth dependent on?
- personal potential to grow
- a direction to grow into
- motivation/ desire to grow
- ability to define concrete actions to take
- discipline to put in the work to do so
- an external enablement to take the necessary actions
- an external environment to receive feedback from
- constant feedback whether you're progressing (in the right direction)
What is "personal potential to grow"?
Generally, I believe everyone has a lot of potential to grow. While some may have more potential than others, it is important to recognise this potential. This may take many different forms but it generally is founded in a vision of yourself which is further developed than you are now. Being able to envision yourself there is dependent on an inner feeling of self-worth ("I am worth more than where I am right now.") and an experience of surprising achievement, which can also be expressed as a deep confidence into one's own abilities.
Being worth more than where you are
In the workplace, many people accept their position as the current state. An example is an intern in a company who has been assigned tasks that are not very challenging for them and create little value for the company. They know they could do more valuable work but since they are "only the intern" they do not feel entitled to request more challenging work instead of their current work (and obviously they also ask themselves "who else would do my current work if not me?" with the obvious answer "no-one"). In addition, they have learned from society that you should accept your position in society as what it is, as society dislikes people that think more of themselves than their status. Even if they know that at some point the time will come and they will get promoted or their boss may realise and assign them the more challenging task, this thinking is in the way of their personal growth.
The problem with this thinking is that people rarely give you more than what you ask for. This is not even meant negatively but rather positively by them as they most probably don't want to overwhelm you. Furthermore, you are the only person who knows what you are capable of. Even if your manager sees a lot of your work, giving more responsibility is not an easy decision for multiple reasons:
- It is hard to estimate someone's entire abilities from their work (as this work will probably never show the full spectrum of abilities)
- It takes a lot of time and dedication to trace someone's performance and development
- Managers don't only manage you but also your colleagues and themselves. They need to keep track of these people's abilities, too, and everyone is their own dearest friend
- Giving more responsibility means that a manager depends on your performance. If they overpromise and you underperform, they need to take blame for both trusting you too much and misjudging your abilities; if you overpromise and underperform the blame for the manager is only trusting you too much (which is much less drastic)
Thus, your manager most probably will be slower to give you more responsibility than you want them to. Or if they are actually faster than you, they may run into a mistake which may make them more reluctant to give you responsibility in the future. Therefore, it is preferable for all that you are the person pushing for more when you know it is time.
Generally, if you keep waiting for others to give you permission to grow, you will reduce your velocity or may even loose all of your motivation to go for more. Since fast, constant, personal growth is fucking exhausting even if you have permission to do so, having just a small bit less drive will slow/ stop your growth.
Surprising Achievement
Another aspect that influences people's ability to recognise their potential is the realisation that they previously have achieved something they before did not believe possible or which others would not have been able to do. This realisation has the potential to radically increase the self-efficacy of someone and to a certain degree may give you a feeling of superiority While feeling superior to others is not a socially appreciated feeling, it can give people a strong feeling of enablement. Since fast, exponential growth is something rare in society it takes an extra bit of self-confidence to be willing to believe in oneself being able to achieve it. Thus feeling like you can achieve more than the average is exactly what is needed to rationalising the commitment.
While the realisation of such surprising achievement is obviously highly dependent on every person's own experiences, many people don't recognise the surprising achievements they have already made. It is thus only a case of identifying the surprising achievements you made in your past to realise it. Doing this implies revisiting the achievements of your life and viewing them in the right light. As previously mentioned, achievements can be either surprising for yourself (i.e. you did not believe you could do it before you did it) or they can be surprising for what is normal in society. Here you should also consider the full spectrum of conditions under which you made these achievements. For example, a University GPA of 8 out of 10 may sound good but not surprising, but what e.g. should not forgotten is the context of such. If a student manages to achieve a GPA of 8 at an elite university while running a student organisation and spending a lot of time with friends or on hobbies, it actually is definitely not your average achievement. Viewing this in the right light is therefore material to be able to come up with the right perspective of your own potential.
What is a direction in which to grow and how to identify it?
As already hinted at previously, personal growth fundamentally depends on the recognition that you are in a certain state and would like to get to a certain other state. The obvious question is how you determine what that other higher state is.
Many have a long term vision of a position or ideal that they at some point in their life want to get to (how to find this is outside the scope of this article). While this is a good start, it will not suffice in order to be able to derive actionable steps that one can implement now. It is thus important to break down this large goal into more intermediate steps or positions which are closer to one's current state. Let's take the example of someone who wants to become a founding CEO of his own start-up.
WIP - to be continued...
From where do you get the Motivation/ Desire to grow?
How to define concrete actions to take?
What is meant with discipline to put in the work to do so
How to get external enablement to take the necessary actions
Why feedback is material for growth
examples