Investing in a Growth Mindset

You are a busy person. You’re leading a team of people that are all depending on you and your support. Maybe you’ve launched your startup and you’re caught up in what feels like a never ending assault of your time to fire after fire. You’re so busy that it feels like the only growth you can focus on is the thing right in front of you. That may be the day to day management of your team or for the founders it could be straight up survival. How could you possibly focus on your personal growth or put intention into building your culture? I mean, you have time to do this later, right?

Wrong.

Too many leaders have learned this the hard way. When you wait to focus on your personal growth, when you wait to put intention into the internal identity of your organization, you get stuck in an impossible cycle of trying to catch up while fending off the ‘stuff’ that you’re not equipped to handle in the moment because you didn’t already do the work, because you haven’t already integrated growth work in a way that is foundational to you, your organization, and the teams you lead.

When you don’t focus on growth and intentional culture from the start, you will always be playing a game of catch up that you never complete.

Let’s be clear, growth and cultural intention are not a tasks that are ever ‘complete’, but there is a significant difference between focusing on growth with the space and intention to do so on your terms, or being forced to focus on growth because you’ve been backed into a corner where you have to or risk it all falling apart.

It’s easier said than done, but not impossible. This task of integrating a culture of growth and intention from the start will create a bigger ask of you. By answering this ask you set yourself and your growing teams up to be prepared to handle the weight of your scale as you hopefully take off.

Let's get curious with how open you currently are, how open is your team?

Often early stage startups think they have this amazing culture where everyone is hyper focused on growth. While there typically is a very exciting idea with eager and competent people somehow balancing an incredible juggling act, what often is actually happening is that there is no real culture or substance to what growth means. Everyone is working through their own lens, including the founding members, and as you grow these differences start to create issues that can hold you back when you need it the most.

The process to start to put intention into what growth looks like for you and for your organization/team is to recognize and take ownership that this work is important and matters. That actually it may be the most important work that you do as you get your company rolling. Without complete ownership, you will always put this work to the back burner. You will always have good intentions about ‘getting to it’. There is a huge difference between ‘owning its importance’ and ‘owning its importance with intent’; one is passive and positions it as future work and the other is active and recognizes the non-negotiable nature required.

There is a really healthy side effect of owning this work, like really owning it from the start. It provides an opportunity for everyone to bring a piece of their humanity into the work. Through this process of growth and intention with culture, you can provide an invitation for you and your teams to bring their whole selves into what they do. When you do this you get teams and organizations that are driving mutually beneficial growth that can create even stronger outcomes. Please will be more driven when they feel that they work somewhere that cares about them, their growth, and in which they get to bring their entire way of being into their work and leverage it for the benefit of the community you’re in

This element of community then begins to build as you craft an organization or team that is focused on growth, has clarity on what growth looks like, and begins to work as a more total unit. Founders and leaders will find that they’re more able to delegate and expand their reach of influence, which will allow them to ideate and evolve at even faster rates. This will happen in a way where the entire team is excited and supporting each other's growth.

I’m sure this all sounds lovely, and you may be going ‘yeah in an ideal world I would totally do this’. It’s important regarding ownership to also really own how hard this work will be. But more than that, to own how hard you may fail as you start this work. To integrate growth and identity into your own leadership and your culture, you’re going to make some missteps. This is par for the course. Stumbling is an equally critical part of the process. Resilience should be at the core of any growth strategy that you have.

The very essence of Flawed Leader is all about facing the challenges knowing that we will not be perfect. This work is no different. It also doesn’t change the significance of the work at hand.

'Flawed 5' - How to take this work on

1 - Build time in for your own growth

As a founder or leader, the growth is never going to happen if you’re not taking it on yourself. It will be hard, but you have the ultimate responsibility to set the example. How are you challenging your current views and positions on yourself and your work? To what extent are you engaging with your teams through a lens of curiosity and trying to understand before directing? How much time are you carving out to see what your competitors are doing, to just have the time to ‘sense’ into where your teams are and what they’re going through. Time is precious but there is no more important time than to set the pace and prioritize this work for yourself.

2 - Build time in to support your teams growth

Equally important, and a parlay really, to prioritizing your own growth is to prioritize your teams growth and your role in it. The most basic element is to have 1-1s…and to not cancel them, or reschedule them, or have them infrequently. You must be a consistent force in your team's growth or they’ll just go through the motions and you’ll be wasting your time and theirs. Let them lead but also have insights from your ‘sensing’ work about how to steer their work to. You’ll also need to make sure you’re providing the means for them to do more than just ‘talk’ about growth. You’ll need to make sure they have work that they’re empowered to do.

3 - Values

Make sure your organization/team has defined values and have clarity on what growth looks like and what expectations are. Your growth and focusing on your team's growth are critically important, but even more important is to have a definition of what growth looks like, what is expected from your growth. This can include having values that actually mean something and can be used for your team to make decisions about their growth, and for the business through their role. You also can value exactly what growth should look like over time. Is this growth based on how they contribute to strategy? Is this growth based on how long they’ve been with you? You must define and use this as an anchor for your growth and your team's growth.

4 - Be realistic about expectations

You do not need to reinvent the wheel. The most common reason that this work doesn’t happen is time. Outside of prioritizing the valuing simply spending the time can make or break the whole process. You don’t have to spend large amounts of time. Outside of the time investment to define what growth looks like and set everything up (which I challenge can be done in as little as a 2-4 hour time investment) you can start with as little as 30 minutes a week. The point isn’t to go from 0-60, but rather to build in the habit of growth. From there you can expand and evolve as possible and as it makes sense for the work that you do.

5 - Allow it to be imperfect

Back to the element of resilience. You will not get it right out of the gate, and you may even fail at your growth attempts more than you succeed. But you will learn, every time, and learning in any form will contribute to your growth. Focusing on growth is playing the long game. You may not see a return for a long period of time, or you may not notice the value until you’re large enough where you would certainly notice its pain. You may not notice the value at all other than recognizing the lack of chaos, which you will have to be in tune to. But it matters. It will always matter and you must make this work important.

The value of growth will literally make or break your ability to do ‘good’ work. Sure, you may be looking to start your company, scale it fast to sell, and move on. But the difference between intention with growth and not having it will be felt by those around you and those you engage with/sell/work with in the future.