If you want to grow … grow!

During my high school years, I spent a year as foreign exchange student at a preparatory school in Dallas, Texas. To fully experience the “American Way of Life” I signed up for fall Football. I had a remarkable experience, and to this day I am still being remembered for holding a St. Mark's School of Texas record – for most negative yards in one season! True story. I was horrible at football.

I used to tell this anecdote often after I had just moved to the US, over a decade ago. It always seemed to resonate with people, I believe not just for its self-deprecating humor but also because it tells a story of personal growth; being from a completely different cultural background, I had gotten out of my comfort zone, received a serious “whooping” – both figuratively and literally – and yet walked away with learnings that helped me grow personally. And by learnings I don’t just refer to becoming aware that I must not tackle the quarterback by holding onto his facemask, but rather gaining a deeper appreciation for American culture and an awareness of my personal strengths and weaknesses. Mostly weaknesses in this case.

Reflecting on this experience and on other instances that have shaped me personally, I came up with my own model to explain personal growth. After recently sharing my thoughts at a leadership meeting, where I received very positive feedback and encouragement, I felt compelled to also share with you (and yes, I am aware that I am playing into many consultant stereotypes by looking for patterns and developing models that try to explain the world). All models are wrong, but some models are useful – I hope you find this one useful.

In my experience, personal growth is a three-step process: First, it always starts with doing something new that takes you out of your comfort zone. It does not matter whether that activity is self-inflicted – like a 15-year-old German playing football for the first time in his life without knowing the rules – or if it is a consequence of an external event, such as suffering sickness or the loss of a loved one.

Second, this action or activity then leads to a result which can be classified either as a success or failure. Interestingly, the direction of the outcome – whether our actions have positive or negative consequences – does not determine the amount of personal growth. In fact, often our negative experiences contribute more to our personal growth than our successes. What does impact growth unidirectionally though is how much effort and energy we put into achieving the desired outcome. I stuck with playing football for the entire season and put my heart and sweat into it despite well-meant advice from pretty much every sensible person around me.

And third, personal growth requires a deep reflection on the reasons for success or failure, which then triggers a learning process. The learning process can for example include an assessment of one’s skills and abilities – and potentially, as in my case, to the realization that football skills and abilities are sorely lacking – and a higher self-awareness, which leads to personal growth.

This model might not be earth shattering in its design or novelty, but it still has several important implications, that may also change the way that you think about personal growth and how you approach personal development. Here are five key insights:

1.?????? Growth requires being uncomfortable and vulnerable. When you get out of your comfort zone, you risk looking not smart or not knowledgeable and you risk failure. I certainly did not look knowledgeable when I was on that football field, and I failed again, and again and again. Kudos to the coaches who gave me playing time.

The same holds true for activities in the business world. Whether you are learning a new skill, building a new capability, or going through a full corporate transformation – it all will feel very uncomfortable and have you on your feet when you do these things for the first time. That’s just part of the growth process. On the flipside, if everything seems easy and routine to you, chances are that you are a not growing.

2.?????? Growth requires action. Acquiring knowledge through reading is not enough to drive personal growth – instead, the acquired knowledge needs to be applied and tested. There is no way to learn playing football just by reading a book or two or by watching instructional videos (and unfortunately also not by trying to play it for just one season). Likewise, in a business setting you can read all the books you want about data processing tools, project management or leadership, but until you actually start doing things and implementing your ideas you won’t learn how your actions impact the organization positively or negatively.

3.?????? Growth can get triggered by your own action. This is an interesting point as it implies that you can grow faster if you only want to, simply because you yourself can trigger the entire growth process. However, it takes a lot of effort and guts to put yourself repeatedly into that uncomfortable spot.

Being a foreign exchange student, I was forced to try new things in a totally new environment all the time, leading to a much faster series of failures and successes, learnings, and growth, than if I had opted to stay in Germany. In fact, I enjoyed the experience of accelerated growth so much, that I tried to put myself into different cultural environments as often as I could; I ended up living, studying, and working abroad in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, India and the US.

4.?????? Growth requires self-reflection and learning. Without self-reflection and the associated learning process, success does not lead to personal growth and might not even be replicable. Had I – hypothetically speaking – scored a few touchdowns without really knowing what I was doing, at some point I would have inevitably ended up scoring on the wrong end of the field.

When you are good at your job without knowing why you are good, there is no way for you to improve yourself and become great. Having self-awareness about your weaknesses allows you to work on them.

5.?????? Failure is a part of the growth process. My growth model does not guarantee success. However, the more often you go through the entire process – the more often you try something new and get out of your comfort zone and learn from your failures – the higher the chances that you have success eventually. In nature most growth patterns are not linear but stochastic or cyclical. Knowing that failure is a natural part of the growth process significantly changes the motivation to get out of one’s comfort zone and risk failure in the first place.

Going back to my football anecdote, the story has actually a happy ending. No, I did not have a Forrest Gump moment or turned suddenly into a football wunderkind. Instead, another coach saw me running on the field and he realized that I would do so much better without wearing a helmet, all the gear and without carrying a prolate spheroid -shaped leather object. He invited me to join the school’s Track & Field team. I eventually learned that I was a pretty good middle-distance runner. That year our team won the Southern Preparatory Conference and I continued to run in college, winning a state championship over 800m. If you want to grow … then go ahead and grow – success will eventually come.

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