INsight/ Growth Not Happiness
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Photo by Alfonso Ecu on Unsplash.
Manila, 5 June 2024 — What the leader journey is about.
“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”
Story
It happened this week. I was reading Scott Barry Kaufman’s acclaimed 2020 book Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization, in which the author, a cognitive scientist and professor at Columbia University, sets out to correct our understanding of the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow. He explains that the widely shared Maslow pyramid showing a hierarchy of needs, with self-actualization at the top, was never drawn by Maslow and doesn’t reflect what he wanted to be his legacy.
Maslow, instead, saw our human development as a process of growth and becoming, much like the later 2003 model of Bruce Avolio, a professor of management at the University of Washington. That model describes leader development as a journey—a powerful and ancient metaphor used by sages through the millennia and now infused with empirical science.
Kaufman’s quote of Maslow points leaders to keep choosing growth and overcoming fear as the way to move forward to their potential and, as he explains, to transcend their potential with others. This insight led Kaufman to recommend that we “strive for growth, not happiness,” even as the latter is receiving so much attention in modern-day psychology and self-help books. How then, do we make growth happen?
Challenge
The way Maslow saw human development, explains Kaufman, was not as a video game where you gain access to higher levels, but as a constant dynamic of two steps forward and one step back. A journey of challenges, in other words. Challenges that get us out of our comfort zone, because that is the only place where growth happens.
On this journey there is no end destination like when you climb a mountain and then plant a flag on the top to celebrate your achievement. No, life and leadership development is a continuous journey of growth, taking challenges one after the other. Kaufman visualizes it as journeying the seas with a sailing boat. To start, you need to make sure that your boat is in good shape and has no leaks, otherwise you won’t get very far at all. And then you need to unfurl your sails to use all of your potential.
That, says Kaufman, is when the actual journey begins. Then, there will be times of smooth sailing and times of stormy weather and rough seas to contend with. As suggested in classical Japanese imagery used by Zen practitioners and business executives alike, we can find ourselves at times either riding the top of a wave or being low down in the depth between waves. It’s all part of the journey. Today, a leader I work with shared that she found herself at a low point between high waves. I know that she takes that in her stride and that she knows how to move up again.
Question
In his book, Kaufman challenges the readers about the purpose they have discovered for themselves to contribute to the world by using their full human potential. That’s also what we do in our international Grow3Leaders community of practice. We challenge each other on purpose and we take challenges, one after the other, to grow our leadership and address some of our world’s greatest challenges by driving change in our own lives and workplaces.
This week, it’s exciting to see how leaders in different countries are working hard to form new Collabs (small teams) to join The Workplace Challenge where they will create a positive change in their workplaces in just six weeks. Doing this work is not easy. Yet it brings out their best and helps them become the leaders they wish to become in their life and work. It’s a challenge of leadership growth, and I feel privileged to join them in their challenge.
When you apply to join The Workplace Challenge this week with three workplace colleagues to work together for six weeks, you will get to choose the change you will create together in your workplace. That makes it a challenge that integrates fully with your work and generates growth by experiential learning together—out loud. When you complete the challenge, you will feel a sense of fulfillment and be ready to grow more leaders around you.