three myths about sparking growth in your people

Working for decades with kids who consistently beat the odds has given me some beliefs about human growth that some find surprising. Specifically, there are two big truths that I’d ask everyone in the world to try on for size: First, that all human beings can grow far more than we can ever predict; second, that it’s much simpler for us to spark this growth than we think.

To do it, we have to flip conventional thinking on its head and dispel a few myths about growth and human development.

Myth #1: Practice comes first.

Truth: Practicing is meaningless without first gaining self-belief.

When our five-year-old, Ronan, was learning to ride a bike he was  clumsy, scared, and easily lost confidence. The world’s typical take on how to help him? Make him keep trying, and he’ll get better, gain confidence, want to bike even more, which will make him even better. It’s a virtuous cycle. 

This idea isn’t totally wrong. It works out in some cases, particularly for those who’ve had a lot of good experiences with learning and growing in the past.

So why call it a myth? Simple: it rarely works this way with those really struggling—and it’s this myth that leads us to give up on people just because they lack enthusiasm, are slow to progress, or because they seem “not to want it.” I’d call this myth the most common growth-killer in those who need it most. 

This myth ignores the reality that Ronan’s cycling career will probably begin this way: Amid the tumbles and skinned shins, he will feel micro-moments of success: cresting a hill on his own before tipping over, correcting a weird twist of the handle bars, a second or two that feel like flying. These little moments of triumph will be pivotal, because they will allow his brain to believe he can actually ride a bike. The minute he realizes he could be successful at it, he tries harder and does more until he is eventually riding like a pro. 

Key to understanding growth, especially in those who struggle, is knowing there’s a stage before practice, where we predict success and start to truly envision ourselves succeeding. 

What’s going on here? Social psychologists have termed a phenomenon the Pygmalion Effect to describe situations in which expectations of performance become self-fulfilling prophecies; for instance, when students do better because they were told an IQ test proved they were “intellectual bloomers,” or when an athlete seems to do worse because she believes herself to be “in a slump.” Our identities around our skills change our performance.

Those who grow radically start practicing only after they assume the identity of a high performer. Only then do most of us put in the extra effort to actually achieve high performance. 

Myth 2: Success comes from within.

Truth: Dedicated leaders can grow anyone. 

So what if Ronan doesn’t have those magical micro-successes to motivate him towards his future as a cyclist? What if it’s all face-falls, screams, and frustration? If that were his first five outings on a two-wheeler, most of us would typically assume that he needs either to have more patience and resilience (“keep trying”) or to summon a more positive outlook while practicing (“not get so down on himself”). 

There are no shortage of stories of Olympians and billionaire entrepreneurs who repeatedly pick themselves up in moments where the world seemed to have beaten them down and encouragement was nowhere to be found. But the assumption that most of us grow from key moments where we alone push ourselves beyond the break is pure fantasy. The truth is that leaders, coaches, teachers, and parents are the most common ignition switch for our biggest developments. And even those superstar loners would have likely gotten there faster with a leader setting the bar first.

Case in point: I stumbled quite a bit writing this very article you’re reading, gotten down on myself and given up a few times. Not knowing this, my wife walked in the room and told me what she really appreciated about another article I’d written, that she’d just read that morning. Without any intention of doing so, she’s just fueled my identity and self-belief to keep going. Instead of my brain playing This is nonsense while I type, it is now playing,You’re a person who can write interesting and helpful stuff. Keep going. 

People don’t just automatically perform better with practice.  They need to believe that they’re the kind of person who can achieve great things. 

Believing that is way easier if they know someone else expects them to be the kind of person who achieves great things.

In fact, a decade-long study following a group of 10th graders found that those who had teachers with higher expectations were more than three times likelier to graduate from college than students who had teachers with lower expectations. I’ve seen a sales team begin working twice as hard simply because their leader told them the company sales record is twice as high as they thought. I’ve seen a drowning special assistant become an inspired one after hearing his boss say, “By the way, I hired you because I knew you had the resilience to become the best I’ve ever had.”

We tend to do this readily with our loved ones. When our five-year-olds fall off their bikes, it’s our job to tell them it’s normal, it happened to us, it happened to Tour de France competitors. We might also point out that this fall was a little better than the last one—or even, smartphones poised, show them a two-second video of how good their balance looked and some feedback on how to get there again. 

The best leaders at growing talent see themselves this way, as responsible for stoking the learner’s identity of success and naming the steps along the way. We task ourselves with their resilience, their positive outlook. When we see truly surprising growth, it came as much from the conviction and discipline of a leader as it does from the performers themselves.

Myth #3: Growth requires relentless focus on absolute standards.

Truth: The fastest growers put their attention on the tiniest improvements.

Back to Ronan and the bike: Imagine on his first day he averaged five seconds per try before falling off, but on the second day that average was seven seconds. If no one ever counted, how would he ever know he improved by almost 40 percent? Since he fell every time, he might have thought he was just as challenged as yesterday. He might have identified as a failure rather than noting his considerable momentum.

Myth #2 reminds us of the leader’s role in narrating successes and tying them to identity. Myth #3 guides leaders to pay more attention to growth than to current ability.

Setting a clear, measurable standard is a key step toward any accomplishment: we don’t usually run companies or lead teams to “get closer to our mission than we used to be.” Leaders who achieve their missions most predictably and sustainably are those who develop their people the fastest. Successful developers of people talk way more about incremental progress than they report on the simple binary of “are we there yet or not.” 

It will take our kids as many as twenty days before they can ride a bike without falling. What if all they thought and heard on days 1-19 was “I still can’t do it.” ?

Here, business leaders can take a note from breakthrough schoolteachers. In many school districts today, students begin the year reading one to five grade levels behind. If teachers only reported which students were on grade level and which weren’t each day, many students would feel hopeless and give up even trying. 

When we fail to measure success in terms of incremental improvement, we not only lose opportunities to grow people, but also to motivate people to drive their own growth. We overlook most momentum in the workforce today, because we don’t track or measure progress. The number of people who believe themselves to be in “ruts,” who could believe themselves instead to be “slowly but surely improving,” is enormous.

Leaders tend to believe that focusing maniacally on where an employee should be—versus how they’re growing—is a noble and even critical practice for keeping the bar high in the workplace. But many of us are sabotaging the motivation and momentum of our most promising employees. 

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The most stubborn myths about growth tell us that high performance is what leads us to believe in ourselves. I think we have that backwards. The belief that we’ll succeed transforms performance.  Exploring this truth can help leaders expand hiring pools, edge out competitors, transform culture and morale during the darkest times, and—I’ll suggest—become more just and hopeful human beings.

-Ben