Your Garden Will Always Grow Something
Nobody has to teach a weed how to grow.
Leave a garden alone for a summer and you’ll get a crop. It just won’t be the one you wanted.
Leadership works the same way. Even if we aren’t intentional about our growth, we still grow. Vines of defensiveness creep into new areas. Blind spot patches become thickets. The worst parts of our personality never just stand pat. They spread.
You Don’t Drift Into Maturity
Getting older is automatic. Getting wiser isn’t.
I’ve worked alongside people who gave up learning somewhere along the way. Too many years, too many reps, and they coasted. They weren’t bad people. They just stopped growing.
We have more information available today than anyone can use, so information isn’t the problem. Michelle puts it simply: wisdom is knowledge applied. That part takes work, and it doesn’t happen by accident.
Faithful Beats Perfect
You are not going to lead perfectly. I haven’t, and I’m not going to start today.
But perfection isn’t required. Faithfulness is. Keep showing up. Check your motives. Do the next right thing. Start moving before you feel fully ready, then adjust as you learn.
Humility is what makes that work. There’s a well-known idea, the Dunning-Kruger effect, that basically says the less we know, the more confident we tend to feel. So when I’m sure I’ve got something figured out, that’s a good moment to get suspicious of myself. I’ve found that humility goes down a lot easier when I serve it to myself than when life has to force-feed it to me.
Then we need consistency. One book, one podcast, or one conference won’t change much. But a steady diet of them will. Michael Jordan became the GOAT by doing the work, every day, even when the spotlight wasn’t on. What we do in the dark shows up in the light.
It’s Not About You
If I grow just to become a bigger, better version of myself, it gets shallow fast. The point is to have more to give.
A leader’s mood travels home with the people they lead. A good workplace might send people home tired but contented. A toxic one can send them home stressed and on edge. Your influence doesn’t stop at the office door.
And you don’t need a particular position to have influence. When one of Michelle’s younger coworkers with small children had to leave early because daycare called, Michelle didn’t make her feel guilty. She said, “Go get your baby. I’ve got this.” That’s leadership, no title required.
A Question for This Week
What are you doing on purpose, right now, to grow yourself?
If the honest answer is “nothing,” you can bet the weeds are already coming in.
If you’d like help building a growth plan that fits your real schedule, book a free discovery call. We’ll talk about where you are and what a sensible next step looks like.
