Am I Growing?
Dean Frieders
General Counsel & Executive Leader | Navigating Billion-Dollar Deals, Complex Compliance & High-Stakes Litigation | TEDx Speaker & Published Author
Continuing our discussion of purpose and introspection, another key question has to be about personal growth. I know people who have done the same job for 20 years or more, and who no longer learn new things. I know an attorney who works on commercial leases for his retail-company employer and all he does, all day long, is work on the exact same document. Every day. Day after day. Year after year. His company won't entertain other forms of lease, so he just does that one document. In the Barbie world, his job is lease.
To me, one of the more surprising things about his work is that he thrives on that stagnant subject matter. He actively resists learning about new trends in leases or commercial real estate. He aggressively resists changes to the language that he's worked with for years. He avoids participating in industry events where his status quo could be disturbed. To the greatest extent possible, he keeps on headphones to muffle out the world, and makes his professional life a game of 'find and replace' to update addresses and dates in a static document.
It's not that he's unintelligent. He's a smart guy in a lot of ways. He's just not growing. (I can safely write about him because he's not on LinkedIn. This forum represents another potential way that he might learn about things in his document that he should change--so he avoids LinkedIn like he avoids industry events). He's found a niche where he can survive in a well-paid job without having to think.
In my first post on purpose, I said that I have some days that seem a bit Groundhog Day-esque. Those days bother me greatly. When I feel like I'm doing the same thing on repeat, I know I'm not growing. When I'm not growing, I feel like I'm regressing. By contrast, my friend avoids growth at all costs.
Growth doesn't mean that you have to do a different job every day. Sometimes, I have variety in my job and sometimes I don't. Sometimes, I'm working on the same contract (with different clients) day after day. Every time I pull out that contract, I work to improve it. I contemplate how to explain the language. I look for articles and posts on current contract trends. I search for new caselaw interpreting the responsibilities of parties under similar circumstances. Much to the chagrin of my amazing contracts manager, I'm constantly updating and tweaking the base document--always striving to make it better...even when it's rewriting contracts to enhance compliance with federal and state WARN Act requirements.
Whatever your job is, no matter how repetitive some of the tasks may be, are you growing or are you stagnating? Or even worse, are you putting your head in the sand and actively avoiding growth?
Recent Articles in the Purpose Series: