Big idea #3: Why growth?

Growth is an interesting word. We use it easily. Personal growth. Professional growth. Leadership growth. Growth mindset. Growth journey. It sounds unquestionably good. Like something we should all want, all the time.

I’m not sure that’s true.

Growth isn’t always the right choice. It isn’t the only way to measure a life. And it certainly isn’t the same thing as advancement.

We all know people who have climbed the corporate ladder and, strangely, appear to have become less developed as human beings along the way. More senior, certainly. More influential. Better paid. But not necessarily wiser. Not necessarily more honest with themselves. Not necessarily more capable of holding complexity, pressure, or responsibility with grace.

And we know the opposite.

People who, through illness, parenting, grief, failure, love, burnout, or some private reckoning, grow in ways that never appear on a CV. They may step away from ambition as it is conventionally understood. They may choose a smaller life on the outside and a larger one on the inside.

Growth ≠ achievement

So when I talk about growth, I don’t mean promotion. I don’t mean becoming more impressive. I mean something quieter and more demanding.

The ability to see yourself more clearly. To loosen the grip of the expectations you have inherited. To notice the stories, loyalties, and fears that have been quietly running you. To begin designing your life from the inside out, rather than simply performing the version of yourself the world has rewarded.

That kind of growth is not decorative. It is destabilising.

Because for something new to emerge, something old usually has to lose its authority. A way of making sense of the world. A role you have played. A need to be seen in a particular way. A belief about what makes you valuable. A pattern that once protected you but now constrains you.

Growth can’t be forced

It has to be chosen. And even then, not always.

There are seasons of life where the right thing is not growth. It is stability. Recovery. Duty. Consolidation. Getting through the week. Paying the mortgage. Being present to children. Keeping promises. Holding the line. Knowing when not to pursue growth can be every bit as wise as knowing when to embrace it. We should be careful not to turn growth into another standard people feel they are failing to meet.

Most of the time, there are very good reasons not to step into the uncomfortable work of growth.

It asks too much.

It disrupts too much.

It can make previously functional arrangements feel suddenly unliveable.

It can complicate relationships, careers, and identities that were, at least on the surface, working.

Growth often begins when the cost of not growing starts to exceed the comfort of staying as you are. It may arrive through a crisis, the end of a relationship, professional disappointment, a diagnosis, or a failure that can no longer be explained away.

Jennifer Garvey Berger - renowned for her work on this topic - explains how growth is a process, not a race. “There are costs to movement just as there are costs to stillness; a person’s current place in the journey is a measure of the opportunities she has been given and which costs she has chosen to pay along the way.”

But these moments often arrive quietly. A sense that something is trying to emerge. A restlessness you can’t quite name. A growing inability to numb yourself from a question that keeps returning.

Is this still who I am?

Is this still the life I want to keep choosing?

Is this still how I want to lead?

That is usually the beginning. Not clarity. Not confidence. Not a plan. A question you can no longer avoid.

Leaving solid ground

The solid ground is not bad. It is everything that has brought you here. Your values and loyalties. Your training. Your family system. Your experiences. Your successes. Your disappointments. The advice people gave you. The strategies that helped you survive and succeed.

There is wisdom in that ground. There is also limitation.

At some point, if growth is calling, you find yourself standing at the edge of what you know. In front of you is a bridge. The other side is not visible. It is covered in fog. You don’t get certainty before you step. That is the uncomfortable part.

Growth asks you to leave the ground that made you competent before you know what will make you whole. That is why it feels risky.

The promise of growth is not that life becomes easier. Often, for a while, it becomes harder. You see more. You feel more. You become less able to hide behind old explanations. You become harder to manage, including for yourself.

But you also become more available. To truth. To choice. To other people.

To the parts of yourself that were waiting for permission to speak. This is where executive coaching, done properly, can help. Not because a coach knows what is on the other side of the bridge. They don’t. And not because they can remove the discomfort. They shouldn’t.

But because the journey is really hard to make alone.

A good coaching relationship gives you a place to examine what you are standing on, what you may need to leave behind, and what might be trying to emerge. It helps you stay with the question longer than you would on your own. It offers challenge, perspective, and care while you find your own way across.

That is not always what people need. Sometimes the better choice is to stay where you are. To rest. To build. To honour the season you are in. But sometimes the question keeps returning. Sometimes the old answers stop working.

Sometimes you know that the life, leadership, or identity that brought you here cannot take you much further. And if that is where you find yourself, then growth may be worth choosing.

Not because it is easy. Not because it is fashionable. Not because it will make you more successful in any conventional sense.

But because something in you is ready to become more true.