FEBRUARY 25 • TRUE LEADERSHIP
Healthy Space 
Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17
Imagine walking into your basement and never noticing the black mold growing around your baseboard. Or not knowing that the building you teach elementary students in has a whole layer of asbestos they never knew about. Our how about those colonies of termites in your foundation. Or how is it around toxic people? or people that don’t add value to you? All of these situations — physical or emotional — are dangerous. What about, your work environment? If you’re a leader, is it a healthy environment to grow your team? Or if you’re a team member, is it a place where you are growing positively? What does that environment look like?
Here’s how to know if you’re not in a healthy, growing environment — If you’re the smartest person in the room; if you are not being challenged; if your leader is not actively looking at ways she can help you grow in your position and in your understanding of leadership; others around you are not growing; coworkers are not looking for ways to help you or they are hindering you; you cannot speak candidly with your leaders and coworkers about any topic no matter how hard or problematic; you’re rarely pushed out of your comfort zone; there are toxic or difficult people issues not being addressed.
This is a stagnant environment — and just like stagnant air in a room, it will eventually become unbearable — and maybe kill your career. This goes for individual relationships as well — is the other person looking out for your good? Are they helping you grow and get ahead? Is the relationship stagnant? Do they really care about you? If the people in your circle aren’t contributing to your growth, then you’re not in a circle… you’re in a cage.
So how do you get into a healthy space? You can always leave and find a new job or different department. But if you do, you need to do your homework during the final interview process and ask great questions about the culture, about communicating, and about the growth environment.
To make changes in your current space, you can do a number of things. First, look at who you spend time with. Both at work and in life. If they are not rooting for you and pushing you to get ahead, it’s time for a change. Find people who will care about you and help you get to where you want to be. Some people are not bad, just neutral or average. Unfortunately, they can actually be worse than people who you know are bad. Why? Because bad people situations will push you to change the environment. With neutral situations, everything will seem fine — no need to do anything different — it’s ok. And you’ll be caught in mediocrity forever. You don’t have to give up on all your friends, but at least you need to add people to your circle that will have an unequivocal positive effect on you in some way… like point you to righteousness, or challenge your thinking; to get out of your comfort zone and have good thoughts and answers; they’ll have good expectations for you; give quality input into your life. Sometimes we just surround ourselves with people who agree with us and never offer anything but flattering input. That’s not helpful. You may be uber happy, but you probably won’t grow. Of course you don’t want someone who is always negative but you also don’t want someone who never takes a risk and tells you the hard, true things.
Challenge yourself. Have you planned out where you want to be in life? What’s your plan for personal growth? Have you thought about it? Have you written it down? This plan should be generally dictating what you should be doing and how you should be doing it to get to where you believe you are called to go.
Again, I’m not saying you have to abandon all your friends. Maybe you’re the one who needs to be challenging them! Maybe you both need to grow — or your whole team! Maybe it all starts with you. You be the change you desire in others. It’s certainly a way to up your influence and ultimately your leadership lid. Maybe your leader is a Level 1 Positional leader and doesn’t know how to grow the team. Is that where you want to be stuck for the rest of your career? And even if your leader is doing an adequate job, that doesn’t mean you can’t help the team and yourself by raising the bar for everyone. What are you reading now to add value to yourself and others?
Quotes:
“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen, again and again, fear must be overcome again and again.”
~ Abraham Maslow
“Growth can be painful, change can be painful but nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”
~ Charles H. Spurgeon
Action: Here’s your takeaway — Map out on paper or your computer where you are and where you want to be and clearly define what that looks like and how you’re going to get there by growing yourself and your team.
Pray: Father, help me build a plan based on your wisdom to grow myself and others, and to help this organization be the best it can be for your glory!
That’s it! Much love and blessings. See you tomorrow!
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