Don’t be Scared. Be Uncomfortable.

Change can be scary. Fear leads to stagnation.

What’s scarier than change? The negative repercussions that can occur when you dig your heels in out of fear and refuse to adapt? Stagnation can kill companies.

Leadership is far more than merely managing people. High-performance companies are comprised of high-performance teams. Just like successful sports teams, business teams need a good coach to take them through the plays, motivate them, and push everyone to a place of discomfort. Great things are born when we’re uncomfortable. It’s the job of a leader to preserve a healthy level of discomfort for their team.

“If you’re too comfortable, it’s time to move on. Terrified of what’s next? You’re on the right track.”

-Susan Fales-Hill, Producer and Author

Being a Good Coach Means Making Your Team Uncomfortable

In the book The Coaching Effect, Bill Eckstrom and Sarah Wirth demonstrate why aggressive and continuous growth only happens from a state of discomfort. They lay out four environments – stagnation, order, complexity, and chaos – that represent anyplace from a sports team to a corporation. Stagnation and chaos are both low-performing or no-growth environments but for different reasons - stagnation because of too much control, chaos because of too little. Order is our comfy spot. We gravitate toward order’s predictability, but that very aspect is what diminishes innovation.

Healthy complexity, tension, or challenge leads to growth. The idea is that you introduce something different into an environment to trigger complexity (new ideas, processes, or methods, for example), which in turn adds an element of discomfort. A leader needs to understand when, how much, and in what way to introduce these new, or complex, elements to their team. It’s about balancing order and complexity to achieve innovative, high-performance results.

Trust is vital to introducing complexity, as well as having a good relationship with each member of your team, because complexity for one person may be order to another. Great leaders, like great coaches, know what each individual on their team needs, and how much discomfort or complexity they can handle.

Proportional Discomfort

Weightlifters never get stronger if they never change the amount of weight they lift or the exercises they perform. It's uncomfortable to lift more weight or perform more repetitions. To enter a state of discomfort is the way to get stronger, but add too much weight and the athlete could get hurt. A good coach will introduce the appropriate amount of weight that challenges the lifter without overwhelming them. That new weight will eventually become the norm, or order, and then they will have to seek out a new way to introduce discomfort or improve their athleticism - perhaps by taking up ballet.

World Heavyweight Champion Evander Holyfield took up ballet barre work to improve his flexibility and make him better. "When I was fighting the big guys, I needed to have something that they didn't have," Holyfield explains. "These guys were bigger, so I had to have a game plan. And flexibility was the key."[i] The ballet barre is a far cry from the boxing ring, and I can only imagine the discomfort the first time Holyfield tried doing pliés.

From Ballet to Business

“People rarely think their team or organization has it. It’s easy to see complacency in others. It’s hard to recognize it in yourself. That's why it's such a deadly threat. By the time you recognize it in your company, it’s often too late.”

– Tom Mendoza, former President of NetApp

Tom Mendoza, former President of NetApp and now esteemed board member, has never minced words when it comes to stagnation. He says, "The number one killer of companies is complacency." Mendoza continues, "I've often said when times are tough you've got to be supportive. When times are good, you have to inject tension. You have to make people do better.”[ii] Whether you call it tension or discomfort, the idea is the same.

Companies change because of market changes. You cannot do what you did yesterday. You need to learn. You need to grow. You need to get better every single day. The more you stand still, the more you're moving backward. The company is changing; therefore, you need to change. You need to adapt and evolve by taking on new responsibilities, learning new solutions, and trying new things. You need to get uncomfortable.

Reach out – I’d love to hear how you push yourself and your team to adapt, change, and grow.

[i] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/fitness/barre-none-athletes-are-ballets-latest-converts/article13458781/

[ii] https://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2013/07/25/complacency-kills/#7898a59e7634