Three Ways to Know You are In Your Sweet Spot

Steve Arntz, Co-Founder and CEO of Campfire, was sitting with his team at their favorite Thai restaurant. A recent hire was joining the team in person for the first time.?

After about two hours of asking each other Campfire-style questions and sharing some vulnerable answers, the new employee asked, “What is the proudest moment of your career?”

Steve sat there, for what felt like the longest nine(ish) seconds of his life, waiting for his team’s responses.

Why?

Because Steve really wanted his teammate to say, “This moment right here, right now.”

And he did.?

He said, “The proudest moment of my career is sitting right here at this table with these six people because I know that this is the team that’s going to take us to the next phase of growth. That we are with the people we need to be with.”

When Steve joined me on the Disrupt Yourself podcast, he shared with me, “I mean, that was the sweetest spot I'd ever been in my career because it was a culmination of every other good spot and bad spot. And every spot that ever happened in my career was right there in that moment, in its most perfect state, with people that I knew I wanted to build something amazing with.”

When you are at the Sweet Spot, the steep middle of your learning curve—your S CurveTM—it feels good. Growth feels fast, and it is fast. Momentum takes over and helps you do things quicker and easier than you did during the Launch Point—the first phase of the learning curve.?

Like Steve and his teammate, you feel like you are right where you are meant to be.?

But not all of us have a team dinner or insightful questions to help us realize we are in the Sweet Spot. And, though most of our S Curves are—or should be—in the Sweet Spot at any given time, they often get overlooked because they are easy.?

Our Sweet Spot S Curves are the proverbial non-squeaky wheels, if you will. We spend less time thinking about and appreciating them because we focus on our S Curves that are currently hard or challenging—our squeaky S Curves.?

How do you know which of your growth curves are in the Sweet Spot? Consider CAR, a mnemonic based on the self-determination theory (SDT), a psychological theory of motivation. According to SDT, we all have three psychological needs, competence, autonomy, and relatedness, which affect our motivation.? When these three needs are met, we feel motivated and can act in alignment with our goals and values.

What does this look like??

Consider Steve’s team. First, they were competent. They felt capable of producing results effectively. Second, they had the autonomy to make decisions and solve problems. They didn’t have all the answers, but they knew they had the right team to solve the problems they might face. Finally—and it seems like this is the area that clicked for Steve and his colleague during that dinner—they felt connected as a team. There was a sense of belonging.

They were in the Sweet Spot.

I know many of us are in the throes of new S Curves that we jumped onto under the guise of New Year's Resolutions, and those squeaky wheels are taking a lot of our attention. But don’t forget to celebrate the things you are already doing well—your S Curves that are in the Sweet Spot.?

Which of your S Curves are in the Sweet Spot??

What’s the sweetest sweet spot you’ve experienced?

This week, how will you acknowledge and appreciate your Sweet Spot S Curves and the people in your life who make them possible?