Try Something New

“At P&G, AG used to have a section in his leadership team meeting called ‘Hot Tips’ to showcase things that could be helpful for others. I once did a 10 min session on meditation — something I practice every day to train my brain — and you could have heard a pin drop. I’m sure they thought, ‘She’s absolutely crazy.’ People just don’t understand what it is.”

We often tell folks who are embarking on learning experiences with us that they’re likely to be taken out of their comfort zone at some point, as we ask them to try on new behaviors and tools that can at times seem silly, unproductive, or unprofessional. Even the mention of the word, “Improv,” for example, can set folks on edge and cause “unexpected zoom malfunctions” among otherwise normally operational equipment.

So goes the old adage: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.”

I think the truth is that many folks are just crossing their fingers that they keep getting what they’ve always got; so they’re fine with doing what they’ve always done. There are others who say they want something different. The challenge is, when you state an ambition of something other than what you’ve always got, then you’re accepting an invitation to do something other than what you’ve always done.

And that’s scary.

Click here to subscribe to Paint & Pipette, the weekly digest of these daily posts.