How often do you pause and come up for air?
My kids are in grades 11 and 12, and my son is off to university in the fall. This spring break was our last opportunity to travel as a family with shared time off. [Although I’ve watched friends with children older than ours have several ‘last trips.’]
We splurged and spent a glorious 10 days in Hawaii. We went there when Jack was 5 months old, so it gave us an opportunity to revisit some of those places with him at a very different stage of life. Wow, how time has passed by so quickly!
We went snorkeling on Kauai and swam with these beautiful Green Sea Turtles. I took a ton of pictures and eventually got this video of a turtle surfacing for air. They can hold their breath for a long time.
On our very long flight home, I was reflecting on these beautiful creatures and, of course, turning my mind back to work.
We can work for long periods of time, getting tasks done, achieving our objectives, and working through our to-do list. However, we also need to come up for air once in a while and see the world outside of our work. While heads down work is important, it can lead to an ‘output focus’, which leads to short-term results. When we lift our heads and take in the broader, longer term context, we focus on long-term growth.
- As leaders, how do you pause to ‘catch your breath’ so you can be the best version of yourself?
- How do you create space for your team members to do the same?
Coaching Leaders to Support a Learning Mindset
When working with new managers stepping into their leadership roles, I often hear something like, “I know I’m supposed to support my team member’s career growth, but I don’t really know what that looks like day to day.”
It reminded me how often we expect leaders to know how to coach and develop others without ever showing them how. That’s where HR and L&D can make a real impact – not by creating more training, but by supporting leaders and helping them nurture a learning mindset and incorporate learning and growth into their everyday habits.
A learning mindset isn’t just a concept from a slide deck. It shows up when a leader asks a good question instead of giving a quick answer, or when they help a team member reflect on what they’ve learned after a challenging project. It’s curiosity in action. It’s resilience through reflection. By nurturing it in themselves, leaders role model it for their team.
Shifting from Short-Term Wins to Sustainable Growth
Executive leaders often focus on short-term wins to satisfy stakeholders, funding providers, or meet service-level agreements. While this approach generates short-term results, it can lead to leaders and team members struggling to remain motivated. It can feel like, “Everyone’s doing the work, but it feels like we’re sprinting all the time with no finish line in sight.”
When organizations focus only on immediate results, people burn out. But when we invest in learning, we provide people something to strive toward. We shift from a sprint to a sustainable pace. Work becomes a place where we can grow, adapt, and stay engaged for the long haul.
Sustainable growth isn’t just about long-term strategy; it’s about how we treat people day to day. It’s in the time we take to support development, the space we make for learning, and the trust we build when we value people beyond their output.
Long-term success begins when we stop asking, “What did we accomplish this quarter?” and start asking, “What did we learn, and how will it position us for success tomorrow?”
In case you missed it
I’ve shared some additional posts online. Here they are, in case you missed them.
- From Training to Action: Making Learning Stick with Impact Sessions (video link)
- Action cards to change behaviour (video link)
