[0:05] As a leader, if your only focus is on delivering results, you are headed towards failure.

[0:11] My name is Rusty Gaillard, and this is Do Something Different, a leadership podcast. I can't tell you how many of my clients come to me with this common challenge, which is that their primary focus is on delivering results. And by the way, these are smart, ambitious people, and they're really good at delivering results. So they deliver high-quality results consistently.

[0:34] They add a ton of value to the business, but they're missing something critical. And that one critical thing, and you can boil it down to one word, is what causes them to be stuck in a rut. They're turning the crank, they're doing the work, they're stuck in the execution of the work because they're missing one critical essential element. I'm going to give it to you in a single word. What that element is? Growth. You may have heard this old fable about a ruler who wants to reward one of his servants for doing good work. And the servant comes to him and says, Master, I would be honored if you would simply put one grain of rice on a checkerboard or a chessboard. And on the second day, put two grains of rice and the third day, four grains of rice and doubling it every day as you go through the checkerboard. That would be a wonderful repayment for my services. And the ruler says, by all means, I will ask my staff to do that immediately. We would be glad to do this. Well, of course, the ruler doesn't realize that this compound effect of doubling it every day for every square of the chessboard results in over 4 million pounds of rice, some obscene amount of rice. And of course, it bankrupts the ruler and the peasant goes home or the servant goes home wealthy. The point of that story is to illustrate the concept of compound growth. But of course, you know that. You're a smart person.

[2:01] And yet in your work, how much of your time and energy do you devote towards growth? This common challenge is that most people overweight results and underweight growth. And think about it. If you could choose between those two things, would you want to be a top performer now with no potential for growth? Or would you rather be a mediocre performer with high potential for growth? I personally would much rather be a mediocre performer with high potential for growth because tomorrow I'm going to be better. The day after that, I'm going to be even better. And I will continue to grow until, of course, I far surpass this person who maybe is very talented but is not growing. As a leader, if you are not prioritizing growth over performance, you are headed for failure. You're headed for failure personally, and you are headed for failure for your team and ultimately for the company because you will run out of runway. At some point, the company will evolve, the industry will evolve, things will get more and more competitive, the expectations will go up, and if you're not growing with the expectations of the company and the team, you are headed towards failure.

[3:09] There are three simple things that you need to think about in order to deliver on this concept of growing rather than just delivering in your job but it starts of course with mindset i'm going to give you the skill set pieces we'll get to that in a second but it always starts with mindset and it starts with this belief in this understanding that growth matters you have to prioritize growth and recognize that it's something that's important to you to your career to your team, to your company. It matters in all of those aspects. And of course it matters to you personally and even to your family.

[3:46] But if you're not prioritizing growth, then you're only focused on performance. Here's the simple truth. You are capable of much more than you're doing in this moment today. How do I know that? Because you are a creative person. You wake up every day with energy and you wake up with a sense of potential and there are new ideas that come to you. And if you are growing, you're exercising those, you're working it, you're taking action on new ideas. If you're just focused on performance, most of what you're doing today, if not all of what you're doing today, looks exactly like what you did yesterday.

[4:23] Don't sell yourself short. You are capable of so much more than what you're doing now. But the way you get there is through growth. That is the mindset shift you have to change, you have to make. You have to think about this fact that growth matters. Because when pressure is high, when stress is high, when the stakes are high, most of us get risk averse. And then we say, I'm not worried about growth. I'm not really willing to risk doing something different or new because I just need to deliver on what's in front of me today.

[4:55] When you make that decision, in that moment, you are prioritizing performance over growth. And that path leads to failure. In those moments, you have to remind yourself, maybe in the short term, you're going to prioritize performance over growth, but you cannot make that decision in the long term because you will fail.

[5:18] The three skillset pieces I want to give you, and they're very simple, three elements of how you can be a growth-oriented person. The first question or the first thing you need to get is clarity. Clarity around what does growth look like for you? What does it mean to grow to the next level? What does it mean to be a next-level leader? Is that in the way you operate, the way you maintain your schedule? Is it how strategic you are? Is it the way you hold other people accountable? Is it the way you communicate and build alliances and influence other people? All of these things matter. Your executive presence, how you show up, what is it that you need to work on? You have to get that clarity because if you don't have clarity on what you're working on, you're just running around. You're unfocused and you're never going to make any progress. There's an old saying of, it doesn't matter what kind of wind you are, what wind you have. If the sailor has no direction, it doesn't matter. You've got to have a direction. You have to have a destination in order to get where you want to go. Clarity is the first ingredient you need in order to grow as a leader. The second ingredient you need to grow is confidence. Because you don't just need the clarity of what you need to work on. You need the confidence to actually work on it. And confidence is misunderstood by a lot of people. A lot of people think confidence requires experience.

[6:48] I ask people sometimes, where do you get confidence in something? And they say, well, I get confidence in something by having done it before and having done it successfully. That builds my confidence. And I would say if that is the basis for your confidence, that's going to be a challenge for you because it requires you having done something. What happens when you're up against something you've never done before? Confidence is really a trusting of yourself to be able to figure something out, whether it goes well or doesn't go well. So when you're in a growth mindset, when you've got clarity on what it is you need to work on, confidence means I'm willing to do it because I know even if it doesn't go exactly the way I want it to go, I'll be able to sort it out. It's going to work out. I'm going to figure it out. That is a really powerful kind of confidence. Totally different from the confidence that's based on past experience. This is confidence that's based on your ability to land on your feet. And when you have that kind of confidence, you're willing to take a risk, you're willing to move forward, you're willing to try new things, all of which are essential ingredients to growth.

[7:52] So if you want to grow as a leader, you've got to get your mindset right, then you've got to be clear about what you need to do differently, and you need the confidence to execute it. The last piece, and I would argue this is in some ways the most important piece. And in fact, I've read multiple studies that say this is the key to growth in any domain of life. Reflection.

[8:13] As a student in school, that reflection was external. Somebody graded your assignments and gave you a grade, and that was your indicator of am I making progress or not? But as a leader, you don't always have that. Or if you do, you have it very rarely. Maybe when you get a performance review once a year. You need to do your own reflection on am I making progress towards those clear goals that I've articulated that are important to me to grow as a leader.

[8:38] And this is what I want to offer to you is when I talk about reflection, most people think it's this big, complicated thing. I need to go sit down for an hour outside by myself and listen to calming music and with a journal and reflect. I'm like, no, you don't need to do any of that stuff. That's way too big of a commitment. And when you make the commitment that big, most people are like, nah, I don't want to do that. Or I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to start. So I'm just going to avoid it. Reflection is very simple.

[9:07] Carve out five minutes. You don't need any more than five minutes at the end of the day or at the end of your week. And if you do this daily, you don't even need five minutes. You need more like 90 seconds to just think back through your day and reflect on your day relative to your goals. You've got your clear goals on what it is that you want to work on and improve on. You think back through your day and you say, did I think about my goals? Did I work on my goals? Did I take a step towards my goals? And if the answer is no, that's okay. You just recognize that and you say, what can I do differently tomorrow? How do I bring this top of mind what specific situation is coming up tomorrow that I can use as a vehicle to grow.

[9:48] You will have meetings, you will have opportunities nearly every day that you can, when you're deliberate, you can use those meetings, you can use those opportunities as a vehicle for your growth. But you have to be deliberate about it. That's where the reflection comes in. So it's part reflection, part planning, 90 seconds a day if you want to do it daily, maybe five minutes a week if you're going to do it weekly. I'm not talking about a super in-depth process. I'm just talking about a deliberate time that you set aside to compare your actions against your goals That simple and it can be a very fast process And then of course the follow-on step is what do you do differently next time? And get specific because if you have this vague notion that i'm going to be more talk more in meetings Let's just say that's your goal. I need to be more vocal and more visible so I'm going to talk more in meetings. If you leave that as a vague notion, you're much less likely to act on it.

[10:45] When you think about it, at the end of the day, you do that 90-second reflection, I wanted to talk more in meetings, but I had these four meetings, and yeah, I didn't talk as much as I would like to. There's some things that I could have said that I didn't say, or I didn't say anything, and I wanted to participate, but I didn't know what to say. Okay, look ahead at your schedule the next day and pick a meeting. Pick the meeting that you say, this is the one that I'm going to participate in. I'm going to lean a little bit further into this and I'm going to stretch myself because I'm clear that that's where my goal is. I'm going to build the confidence to say, I'm going to try it. And I know I'll land on my feet. It's one meeting. I'm going to land on my feet. So I'm confident enough to do it. Get specific about which meeting it is so that you actually take action on it.

[11:25] That's why that reflection moment is so powerful. And again, it doesn't have to be an hour journaling with calming music and candles. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the 90 seconds, the 30 seconds, thinking about your goal, thinking about your actions. Do those two things line up? How can you get them to line up going forward? And what is a specific action you can take?

[11:49] You are bigger than your circumstances. You are bigger than the job you are in. You are bigger than any assignment you have been given. You are an amazing person. We wake up every day with energy and possibility. You're creative. You're resourceful. You're smart. Tap into those things and grow. Grow them. Grow your capabilities by doing new things. It requires these three very simple steps. Clarity on what growth looks like for you. Confidence to go off and execute to take action. And reflection to see what worked, What didn't work? How can I tweak that going forward?

[12:29] Got to prioritize growth over performance, or you will never continue to succeed as a leader. In fact, you will fall further and further behind because the world is growing. The world's evolving. Companies are growing. I had a conversation with a client just today who was talking about people on his team who are very happy with their strengths and their levels and they're static. And yet the environment around them is shifting and changing and growing, especially in these days of AI. So if you're not growing and shifting and changing as a person, you will be left behind. The company is elevating. If you're not elevating as fast or faster than the company, you are falling behind. That means you have to prioritize growth, personal growth, and the growth of your team as much as you prioritize performance.

[13:17] Take this. Take a few moments. It doesn't have to be long or arduous or complicated, but come up with one or two things that you can clearly focus on that are growth opportunities for you. Build that confidence, that internal narrative that says, even when I do these things, even if they're new, even if they don't go well, I'll figure it out. I'll land on my feet. And then add in the reflection. A couple times a week, daily if you can, 30 seconds, 90 seconds, brief, comparing your goals against your past actions. Where can you adjust that and where specifically will you take action? Because it's in the doing that you get different results. Thinking about things doesn't get you there. You've got to do something different.