Leadership Development and Decay
Sometimes you need to scale down to scale up. And sometimes you just need to scale down.
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Last year, I took a course on the Art of Developmental Coaching.
While much of the course was oriented toward “vertical” development, aka getting bigger, better, and growing up, there was one session that stood out. It was on the unique perspective that indigenous people bring to development.
What indigenous people know that we so often forget is that while the perspective that development is about growth isn’t wrong, it’s only part of the story.
Indigenous people have chosen to keep their lives closely aligned with nature and it’s processes. In nature development = evolution, and evolution is cyclical—periods of waxing and waning, success and failure, are built in. While natural systems experience periods of expansion and growth, they also necessarily experience periods of reduction and decay. This reduction and decay is necessary to create the space, energy, and resources for whatever is to come next.
When most of us think of our personal or businesses developmental trajectory over time, our wish is for it go up and to the right, without fail. But nothing does that without fail. In fact oftentimes, in order to grow to the next level, you need to pair back.
If traditional thinking about growth tells you to Clean up, Wake up, Grow up, and Show up, this more holistic view tells you to also make space to Slow Down, Calm down, Scale down, and Step down.
In certain periods of your development, much like nature, you will be served by reduction, by going down. And similar to nature, my experience is that if you don’t make space for it, life will force it on you. Life will deliver it’s message to you with a whisper, but if you don’t listen, it will gladly deliver the same message with a hammer.
Sometimes we land in a general period of decay. Other times, we may be served by allowing certain areas to decay while others grow. By embracing the reality that growing down will happen, we can surrender to these periods and allow them to serve us without resistance. In my experience it’s resistance to these periods that lead to explosive falls, as life decides a kind message will no longer do and chooses to use the hammer.
Sometimes you need to cut a line of business to make space for the line that will take your business to the next level
Sometimes you need to step away from a partnership to find the right partner for you
Sometimes you need to give up an old way of doing things to discover a new more effective way
All of these things require a period of reduction and decay, and a step into uncertainty. What will be next? You can’t know until you’ve truly let go of what’s here now.
I’ve been in one of these periods recently. Nothing has been happening to the quality I’d like, and I’m noticing the need to slow down, calm down, scale down, step down. That’s included posting less here, as well as stepping back from facilitating a retreat I was going to co-run in the fall.
In this moment, the call is loud and clear: back to basics. Chop wood, carry water, and take it right into the unknown to learn what gets to come next.
Challenge
Where in your life, leadership, and business, would you be served by:
Slowing down?
Calming down?
Scaling down?
Stepping down?