Growth and Development
Today we talk about growth and development, starting from a testimony of one of our coachees, whose sketch we will not trace, for obvious reasons of privacy.
Manager of a multinational, on the threshold of forty, very rational and strong-willed person: degree in engineering, immediately hired by the multinational she had dreamed of since she was a student, two experiences abroad, a list of goals achieved in the previous fifteen years of life and career. Life and career are so firmly intertwined, as to make them inextricable.
She reaches an age where she begins to feel the need for motherhood, which is inevitably treated as a "project", as one of the goals to be included in the list of things to do and to achieve.
So she comes to us, with a need to bring some order into a substantially under control and well-run “system”: she needed a sparring partner to plan a step that she felt would be a discontinuity in her career.?
"Do I have to do this first or that first?”
"Do I have to complete the project first, and then can I think about the child?
Or do I launch the baby now?"
"Compared to my next promotion, what should I do first?"
Lots of "I should”, “I must”, lots of control, lots of certainties.
And, a few weeks after starting her coaching journey, these certainties collapse and with them the control and the "musts": her boss is fired and the new boss, during the first presentation meeting, informs her that she is included in the list of redundant people.
The coachee collapses – as it is easy to imagine – because everything on which she had bet and that had provided confirmations and reassurances proves to be adverse, but above all unstable and uncontrollable. Her personal growth paradigm shows all of a sudden to be attackable, questionable, replaceable by others.
The dilemma is right here: growth and development are not the same thing, but indicate two completely opposite concepts.
Growth is linked to quantifiable, quantitative variables, while development is qualitative by nature.
Growth is in fact continuity, an increase in already existing variables, knowledge, goods, etc.; while development is inherently linked to something new or different, which was not there, is not there, but will be. Therefore, development means discontinuity, fracture, future.
Growth – in most of the business contexts in which we operate – is dependence, while development is interdependence.
Furthermore – and the example describes it – a growth that is not necessarily systemic, harmonious, but based on the concept of infinite increments is unattainable (and the disasters of this belief are there for all to see).
Development, on the other hand, if designed on systemic, sustainable and ecological rules, is not only feasible, but it imprints progress, which spreads and impacts on the other parts of the system in which it is inserted.
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Without forgetting that infinite growth, in addition to being an unrealizable result, a fantasy, is a conception that creates addiction and a sense of perennial frustration.
So, not "growth or development", but "Growth AND Development", even better: "Growth THROUGH Development"!
Our transitions are designed and implemented within this paradigm…
Thinking about your current situation, what does growth represent for you?
And what development?
Imagine yourself at the end of a completely satisfactory development period:
Where will you stay?
What will you have achieved?
In this newsletter we’ll give inputs to individuals and organisations who are attentive to the human side of change, and willing to bring awareness and clarity to their needs, to signals not to be overlooked, to barriers to overcome and to their innermost fears.
We’ll also talk about energy release, innovation, engagement, vitality, sustainability, systemic ecology and all the benefits that come as a gift, when we listen to that call and decide to honor it and live a real transformation.
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