Be Encouraged

Becoming Good at Growth

Remember Dick Fosbury… way back in the first post in this series?

When he went over that bar backwards in Mexico City, the coaches and competitors who had spent years mastering the straddle technique were the last ones to see what had just happened. The crowd was captivated. The scoreboard told the story. But the people most invested in the way things had always been done took the longest to come around.

That’s not a criticism of them. It’s a deeply human response.

Change is easier to appreciate in hindsight than in the moment. A new approach looks awkward before it looks brilliant. And the more you’ve invested in the old way, the harder it is to see the new one clearly.

If anything in this series made you uncomfortable, or was easy to quickly dismiss, or landed with a quiet “nope, not for me” or “I’ve tried that before,” that reaction might be worth sitting with. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It might mean you’re close to something.

Three Ideas Worth Carrying Forward

We’ve covered a lot of ground over the last four posts. Not theory. Practical ideas about how leaders actually grow, and what gets in the way.

Here’s how I’d summarize where we landed, not as a checklist, but as a posture.

Ownership is the weight you choose to carry. Not the credit you claim when things go well, but the responsibility you don’t put down when things go sideways. Its completion. It’s delivering clarity and follow-through, even when it’s inconvenient, and especially when it’s hard. It’s what you do when nobody is watching. The pressure of leadership is a privilege. Own it like it is.

Communication is the bridge between what you intend and what actually happens. It flows to the people you report to, across to your peers, and to the people you serve. It renegotiates commitments early instead of going silent until the deadline passes, hoping they’ve forgotten about it or at least aren’t looking for an update. It creates clarity instead of delivering content and hoping it lands.

Development is the intentional decisions you make, every day, about whether you’re still becoming someone worth following. More than a training event or a webinar you half-watched while multitasking. It’s the intentional, consistent choice to keep closing the gap between where you are and where the role requires you to be. It’s looking for those around you who need and want to develop. It’s finding ways to help make those around you better.

The Bar Is Higher

We started this series with a high jumper from Southern Oregon who changed his approach when the old one didn’t work, not because someone told him to, but because he was willing to try something different.

The bar didn’t get higher because athletes tried harder. It got higher because the approach changed.

That’s still true. And the bar in leadership keeps rising. More complexity. More change. More is being asked of you and the people around you. Effort alone won’t clear it.

What got you here is a foundation. It is not a finish line.

What Writing This Taught Me

Something surprised me through this process.

This series started as a presentation I had the privilege of sharing with a live audience. Turning it into something written, something I had to think through carefully enough to put into words, taught me a few things I wasn’t expecting.

The topics I felt most confident about, after reflection, turned out to be the areas where I have the most work still to do. Confidence, it turns out, is sometimes just familiarity dressed up as mastery.

The area I felt least passionate about going into turned out to be the most exciting to build. I won’t tell you which one. But the process of developing the content surprised me in ways I didn’t anticipate.

And the joy of learning and discovery. That never gets old. Not for me. I hope not for you either.

My why, what I’d call my personal mission, is simple: I help make things better. Places, problems, people. That’s the why behind the work, behind the writing, behind the conversations I get to be part of.

One more thing before we close.

Development Is Something You Give

Everything in this series has been framed around what you can do to grow as a leader. But development isn’t just an activity you do or a benefit you gain. It’s something you give.

The leaders who have had the most impact on me didn’t just talk about ownership, communication, and development. They modeled it… invested in it and helped grow those things in me. They challenged my thinking. They created space for honest feedback. They shared what they were learning and stayed curious in front of me so I could see what that looked like.

That’s why I enjoy doing this… speaking to teams, creating new content, sharing not just my wins but my misses too. Not because I have it all figured out (I think we’ve established that), but because I genuinely enjoy the process of building it and sharing it. Then, if something here made one leader think differently, communicate more clearly, or pick up a book they wouldn’t have otherwise, that’s just all the sweeter.

So, my ask of you: share what you’ve learned. Share from your experiences, the good ones and the hard ones. Those around you are made better by what you have to share.

A Final Word for the Skeptics

If you’ve read this far and some of this still feels like a lot… too idealistic… too much work… too far from where you are right now… I want to say something directly:

The people who watched Fosbury go over that bar backwards and shook their heads weren’t bad coaches. They were experienced ones. They’d seen a lot. They knew what worked.

And they were still wrong about what was coming.

You don’t have to change everything. You don’t have to become a different leader overnight. But somewhere in ownership, communication, and development, there is something that needs your attention. One thing.

“I help make things better.”

Turns out, you can too.

Be Encouraged.

This is the final post in the Becoming Good at Growth series. If you missed any of the earlier posts, you can find them all here: Part 1 – Introduction, Part 2 – Ownership as a Leader, Part 3 – Communication as a Leader, Part 4 – Development as a Leader. And if this series resonated with you, share it with a leader in your life who might need it.