Growing sucks.
Growth is great. But the process of growing sucks.
While I’m out on parental leave, I’m re-posting some of my favorite newsletters from the archives. Enjoy this post from September 2023!
I recently met up with a friend who was several months into a new role. She joined the company because she wanted a stretch opportunity, and as we caught up I learned that her first quarter in the new job had been really hard — she didn’t have strong relationships yet, it was challenging to navigate competing priorities without full context, and she found herself reverting to old patterns, habits, and insecurities that she didn’t like (and weren’t leading her to be as effective as she knew she could be).
I’m not sure if my response was helpful to her personally, but I’ll share it here in case it’s what you need to hear today: “Yeah. The process of growth sucks.”
When I ran Learning & Development at Harry’s I would see a repeated pattern play out: someone would claim they wanted “more opportunities to grow,” but then, when actually given those opportunities, they would fail to recognize what was right in front of them. Because when we say “I want to grow” what we often actually mean is “I want to have grown.” The process of stretching is, well, often pretty painful.
Think back to any period of growth you’ve had in your life. Having teeth is great, but teething sucks; I’m glad I know how to drive, but merging onto a highway for the first time was terrifying; I’m grateful now for feedback I got in my first job, although at the time I felt like a total failure; breakups suck even though they teach us a ton about what we need in future relationships.
So what? If you — or someone on your team — is struggling, chances are you’re learning and growing. That realization doesn’t make it all better (sorry...), but it does give the discomfort meaning. And you can draw out that meaning, for yourself or someone else, with questions like:
What am I learning from this experience?
What about this is so hard? To what extent is that something I want to learn / develop / grow around?
What do I hope that in [6 months] I’ll have gained from this challenging time?
What do I know, or have I experienced, that [6 months] ago I didn’t have?
When (and how) will I check in with myself to take stock of progress?
Having grown is a great thing. But growth often sucks. And as someone who thinks about personal and professional growth for a living, I think that the more we can be honest and realistic about that, the better.