Step Out of Your Comfort Zone to Accelerate Your Growth as a Leader

Neale Donald Walsch, American author, actor, screenwriter, and speaker once said, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” This is especially true in terms of leadership and rising successfully in your career. Embracing challenges and taking calculated risks can help you as a leader develop resiliency and cultivate a growth mindset – critical qualities that are essential to effective leadership in our era.

According to Lolly Daskal, executive leadership coach, in her article, ‘Leadership Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone,’ “Effective leaders know that leading from their comfort zone means they’re not learning, growing, developing, or getting results. The best leaders understand thatnbsp;every improvement comes with stepping out of comfort zone, because for most things to change they have to be challenged.” Take a moment to ponder the inner thoughts and driving forces that keep you in your comfort zone: what is holding you back from rising up and leading with your greatest potential? Complacency, doubt, fear, trepidation? These feelings get in the way of you unlocking your greatest potential.

In this October newsletter, I show you how to develop, grow, and rise to your greatest potential as a leader by mastering the four steps listed below. If you can identify what is holding you back, you can pivot and be your own catalyst for positive change and growth. Follow these four steps to unlock the next level of your growth over the horizon.

1. Turn challenges into opportunities
2. Learn to push your boundaries
3. Step out of your comfort zone
4. Cultivate a growth mindset

1. Turn Challenges into Opportunities:

Challenges, especially as a leader, can feel daunting and overwhelming. But if you want to be a successful leader, it is important that you embrace your challenges and turn them into opportunities. It’s all about changing your mindset and your perception. Adopt a growth mindset rather than one of resistance, avoidance, or stagnation. Demonstrate a can-do attitude to inspire your team as well. By doing so, you as a leader can further develop, grow, and learn. Continuous evolution, improvement, and innovation is the name of the game, and it will set you up for success and lead to remarkable achievements.

According to the Hive, ‘How To Turn Challenges Into Opportunities To Become A Better Leader,’ Jocelyn Chong,?best-selling author and certified life and business coach, said “As Winston Churchill said, never let a good crisis go to waste. I see challenges as the most opportune time for a leader to demonstrate true leadership qualities.” Listed below are Jocelyn’s best tips to turn any challenge into an opportunity and become a better leader. Listed below are some of Chong’s best tips to turn any challenge into an opportunity and become a better leader in the process. Practice implementing these into your daily leadership strategy as challenges arise. Does it feel any different when facing a challenge? Does the challenge feel more manageable??

Tips to turn challenges into opportunities:

• Choose a goal and determine why you want to achieve it - “To excel, always focus on one goal at a time because your brain likes simplicity and clarity,” according to Chong.
• List everything that needs to happen - List everything that needs to happen for your goal to come to completion. From tasks to stakeholders you want to involve.
• Brainstorm and anticipate all possible obstacles - “Get ultra-clear about all possible obstacles. This will remove confusion, overwhelm and procrastination,” says Chong.
• Turn all the obstacles into strategies - Here’s where you turn hardship into gold! “Make this section measurable using this sentence ‘By (fill the date), I will have completed and created (fill the blank) and will know I’m done because of (fill in the blanks the exact/anticipated results),’” says Chong.
• Execute from a place of abundance and joy - “Our thoughts create our reality, so choose positive thoughts and emotions,” says Chong. Then take action from that emotional state. This can be easier said than done, of course, but that kind of self-mastery will?develop you into an excellent leader?during difficult times.

You can read the full article in its entirety by clicking here.

2. Learn to Push Your Boundaries:

Tap into the concept of fearless leadership and push your boundaries to achieve the impossible. This might sound like a tall order, but it is a necessity in order to stay competitive, innovative, and relevant in today’s ever-changing workplace. It takes conviction and courage to think outside the box and push your boundaries. According to Walk Me (The Change Management Blog), ‘Why Pushing Boundaries Is Necessary to Fueling Innovation,’ “All of today’s biggest tech companies – such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon – are examples of companies that have been willing to step outside the status quo in order to innovate and create new forms of value.”

According to the article, here are a few ways organizations and their people can push beyond their own boundaries and stay relevant in the post-COVID next normal. Try these pushing boundary techniques on for size and see if they have a positive impact on your organization:

• People: rethink attitudes towards change –When asked to push beyond boundaries, it should come as no surprise that many employees resist change and cling to the status quo. To help employees surpass these often-unnecessary limitations, employers can take several strategies:

a)???? Implement employee training programs

b)??? Hire employees who are creative and innovative

c)???? Cultivate a culture that is open to learning

• Processes: redefine business models - Business models should be redefined for the new economy. The future of business depends on how quickly you can adapt to change and how well you can shift from one business model to another.?
• Technology: adopt and innovate - Adapting to new technology and innovating is the only way to stay relevant in any industry, including “traditional” industries such as manufacturing, energy, and agriculture.?Organizations willing to adopt new technology early on, therefore, stand a better chance of keeping up with these shifts and leaving their competitors behind.

You can read the full article in its entirety by clicking here.

3. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone:

Stepping outside your comfort zone both personally and professionally is essential for growth. It’s so easy for us to all be paralyzed by our comfort zone and get stuck in the status quo. Rather than fear the unknown, why not approach it with curiosity and view it as an opportunity? What if uncertainty is the place where you unlock your truest potential?

I recently stepped out of my own comfort zone by embarking on a camping solo in Northern New Mexico. I went from thinking “I’m not someone who camps” to acquiring all the gear and mindset shifts needed to plan for the 3 day/night solo. As a result of facing many circumstantial and internal challenges during my time alone, I boosted my confidence, cultivated greater problem-solving skills, experienced expanded states of consciousness, and opened up a whole new area of personal growth. In the past, I led retreats in Bali. This recent experience has inspired me to revisit the scope of my services: what’s to stop me from incorporating camping solos as a part of future leadership retreats for rising leaders who really want to test their edges and stretch themselves?

According to Adam Grant,? organizational psychologist and author, in CEO Magazine, ‘Why Leadership Needs to Start Stepping Out of Comfort Zones Again,’ “It takes curiosity to learn. It takes courage to unlearn. Learning requires the humility to admit what you don’t know today. Unlearning requires the integrity to admit you were wrong yesterday. Learning is how you evolve. Unlearning is how you keep up as the world evolves.”

So, ask yourself: are you ready to get comfortable with being uncomfortable?? Listed below are three strategies from the article above to help you escape your comfort zone and reach new heights of innovation and creative thinking. You can read the entire article here.

• Lean into discomfort - Accepting discomfort is not the same as leaning into it. Deliberately and consciously engaging with discomfort (even searching it out) allows us to take charge of a situation, motivating others around us and reinforcing our commitment to innovation.
• Adopt a mindset of experimentation - The world is changing rapidly. This change isn’t slowing down, nor should we. There’s freedom in experimentation. Remember, experiments by nature encompass failure, turning it into learning and continuous improvement.
• Look for adventure in the mundane - Remember that sense of adventure you had in your youth? When the whole world was full of possibilities and excitement? When nothing seemed impossible? As improbable as it might seem, good innovators seek out adventure, bringing the risky, the challenging, and even the impossible back into their lives.

4. Cultivate a Growth Mindset:

As a leader, adopting and cultivating a growth mindset is crucial to the long-term success of you, your team and your organization as a whole. Leaders who embrace this type of attitude know that success is based on calculated risks, continuous improvement, emotional intelligence, embracing challenges, innovation, ongoing learning and pushing boundaries. According to the Growth Institute, ‘Growth Mindset: Why It’s Needed for Successful Leadership,’ “Leaders who adopt a growth mindset will multiply their team’s potential and create a healthy culture of accountability that drives business growth.” So, how do you cultivate a growth mindset? As a leader, adopt and embrace the following practices listed below from the article, so that you can create and nurture a growth mindset for yourself, and your team.

• Embrace Change - The most effective modern leaders embrace the fact that we live in a rapidly changing digital world. By embracing change instead of fearing or resisting change, they make themselves ready to drive meaningful change — whether that means changing themselves, their team, the systems and structures of their organization, or even pivoting their business direction and vision.?
• Become self-aware - Before we can change and grow, we need to first understand our starting point. What are our own limits, motivations, and emotional states? With self-awareness as a leader, you become better equipped to make impactful decisions and explore opportunities to grow the business. It will also help you identify the areas that need more growth for you and your team.
• Disrupt Yourself - Once you become self-aware, you are ready to disrupt yourself. According to Mark Sanborn, author of the Potential Principle, leaders need to disrupt themselves before someone or something else does it for you. If change hits you from some other source — say, a disruptive technology — you’ll find yourself struggling to catch up and adapt. But if you become the one driving innovation, that makes you the game-changer.

You can read the article in its entirety by clicking here.

In closing, if there has ever been a time to turn challenges into opportunities, that time is right now! Embracing challenges is the key to unlocking your greatest potential as a leader. By pushing your boundaries and stepping out of your comfort zone, you will not only experience growth yourself but also foster a culture of innovation and adaptability that drives your business to achieve success. By adopting a growth mindset, you will cultivate resiliency and propel your team to grow, learn and RISE together.

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Erin Owen, MBA, PCC, JCDC/JCTC, CPQC (she/her/hers)

Executive and Leadership Coach

Website:?https://erinowen.com

LinkedIn:?https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/erinowen/

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