One of the toughest moments every leader must face is hitting a plateau.
I define a plateau as the moment when your strengths and ways of being, that got you to where you are, will not get you where you need to go.
Even worse, often, these old habits may cause you to fail.
When you hit a plateau, you have to go through the uncomfortable process of shedding old behaviors and learning new ones. And you need to do it while running your team meaning your growth is happening in a highly public space.
For some, growth means becoming more vulnerable. For others, it means building resilience. For some, it means dropping your ego. For others, it means building a bigger backbone.
To help explain, here are two examples:
First, a personal one.
At my company, Looksharp, for the first five years, I thrived because I was both highly competitive and highly sensitive.
I am a heart-based person and live with the fear that I am worthless. This worry pushes me. It makes me courageous, hard-working, and deeply in tune with others. But, this fear (when not managed) also causes me to be stressed-out and reactive.
In 2014, as our company grew and my job shifted from being entrepreneurial to managerial and running a 5-person team, my heart-based leadership hit a plateau.
In this new role, I needed to provide consistency vs intensity. I needed to be strategic and combative in executive meetings, rather than emotional.
My sensitivity, which made me effective early in my career, was causing me to fail. I needed emotional resilience in order to grow.
--
As an opposite example, I coach a founder who is tough as nails. Her toughness was a super power when building her first company--until it wasn’t.
This founder is hard-working, resilient, and great at building a vision. However, as a first-time founder, she refused to show any weakness. She managed her team with intensity and if people made mistakes, she called them out publicly. She held 1-1’s with her reports, where she encouraged them to be vulnerable, even as she never showed vulnerability. She didn’t connect with her team at a deeper level.
As her job changed from building to managing, she hit a plateau.
Eventually, her reports complained. Instead of accepting their criticism, she fought back. Within a two-month period, 6-people quit. Eventually, she was fired and had to leave the company she helped start.
Her toughness helped her go from 0 to 1, then led to a plateau, where she needed vulnerability to build trust and better results.
--
The hard truth is that if your business grows, there will be a point where your normal way of operating, will stop working.
For me, it took a painful turning point for me to see my blind spots. And, this is true for most leaders. They wait until it’s too late before recognizing they need to change.
The first step to overcoming a plateau is to know it is happening. To see that your old way of doing things is no longer working and to admit this.
And, the best way to prevent a plateau from its worst effects, is to surround yourself with people who will give it to you straight. This includes everyone from mentors, to advisors, to a coach.
If you don’t do this, you risk ending up like the countless CEOs who build huge things only to hit a plateau and not enjoy the fruits of their labor.