Part of leading yourself is learning when to challenge yourself at strategic moments in your professional life. When I look back at my career, several big professional growth spurts were directly attributable to when I pushed my comfort zone. These were times in which I had little or no experience with a particular area or in a certain subject.
I had to learn on the fly as I took on and mastered those new projects or responsibilities, a strategy that enabled me to really accelerate my career. That made me a big believer in the importance of periodically pushing your comfort zone. From a professional standpoint, tackling something new has the power to build your capacity for success and is a great discipline worth pursuing.
Once you identify what you want to do or learn, incorporate that into your leadership development plan, so it becomes a real target—a challenge you’re committed to addressing. Then, hold yourself accountable to ensure it happens.
Here are some considerations tied to pushing your comfort zone:
View learning as an opportunity to grow confidence. Knowledge is power. The more you know, the more equipped you will be to effectively lead and manage over the course of your career. Not only will you feel more in control, but you’ll also display more confidence because of the prior experience you’ve gained by challenging yourself.
Trust in the power of learning. If you are willing to push your comfort zone and learn new things, people will probably recognize your efforts, too. It’s a great way to set yourself apart from others and get ahead more quickly in your career.
As people notice, the efforts you’ve made will pay off— perhaps you’ll land that breakthrough client, someone who never gave you the time of day until you took that self-initiative to become smarter or more skilled at business development. On top of this, your newfound skills and expertise could earn you a better position within your current company or a more challenging, exciting opportunity outside it.
Make it fun! If you make the conscientious choice to view your self-improvement—even the professional kind — in a lighthearted, positive way, you can actually enjoy whatever it is you’ve decided to learn. Approach the goal you’ve set with a positive, grateful attitude, and your perception about the goal and the journey will simply feel easier, less like work, and more like fun.
View this commitment as something you want to do, not something you have to do, thinking of it in terms of exploring fresh horizons, creating new relationships, pushing exciting personal boundaries, and so forth. When you set a goal to learn something new, actively plan for a way to make the experience enjoyable.
The Disciplined Leader recognizes pushing the comfort zone can become a fun challenge that makes professional and personal growth more rewarding. Challenging your comfort zone can accelerate and lead to new career opportunities, building your potential to achieve your leadership goals.
Take action! Make a list of things that you want to learn that will push your comfort zone. Incorporate your top picks into your self-development plan.
- Take a class in a relevant field that will push you in new ways and sharpen your skills.
- Seek more responsibility in the areas you want to develop. These areas can be inside or outside of work.
John Manning is the president of Management Action Programs, Inc. (MAP) and author of The Disciplined Leader: Keeping the Focus on What Really Matters. MAP is a general management consulting firm headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. For information, visit https://www.mapconsulting.com.
