Your capacity for growth depends on the answer.
Every week, I spend most of my time working with growth – facilitating full-day leadership workshops and masterclasses, coaching executives one-on-one and helping leaders and teams understand the behaviours that may be enabling or limiting their success.
Across all of this work, I keep coming back to one powerful truth: our capacity for growth may be directly linked to how much truth we can face about ourselves without running away from it.
We all say we want to grow. But neuroscience gives us an interesting insight into what growth actually requires.
What the neuroscience tells us
Our brains are constantly making predictions about the world, including predictions about ourselves. When what actually happens differs from what we expected, the brain registers what neuroscientists call a prediction error. That gap between what I expected and what actually happened is extremely important because it gives our brain information it can use to update its existing model.
No error, no update. Put another way: if your brain never allows you to be wrong, it becomes very difficult to grow.
Some of the hardest prediction errors to tolerate are the ones that challenge our view of ourselves. For example:
I thought I was approachable – but my team does not experience me that way.
I thought I listened – but people experience me as dismissive.
I thought I handled pressure well – but others experience a very different version of me when the pressure is on.
I thought I was demonstrating my love – but my partner doesn’t feel it.
When information contradicts our identity, we can instantly become invested in protecting because the brain can interpret it as threat. Attention narrows and the mind starts looking for an exit: defend, rationalise, minimise, distract or blame.
Escaping brings immediate relief. But sadly, the brain learns from that relief too. The next time uncomfortable feedback arrives, it becomes a little easier to reach for the same escape route. Avoidance therefore does not simply cost us one learning opportunity. Repeated often enough, we stop learning and escape instead.
This is how someone can be intelligent, capable, ambitious and highly motivated, yet reach 40, 45 or 50 still repeating patterns that were evident at 25. The information that could have changed them kept arriving. They simply became very good at explaining it away.
So how do we do something different? Let’s explore five Key Steps to…
‘be the difference that makes the difference.’
Catch yourself at the exit.
Notice what happens when feedback makes you uncomfortable. Do you immediately dismiss it as wrong, explain it away with your intention, find fault with the messenger or justify what happened? Before responding, ask, “Am I really evaluating this information for the lesson and growth or escaping it?”
Look for the prediction error.
Get curious about the gap. What did I believe about myself or my behaviour? What actually happened? How did others experience it? Do not rush to close the gap. The gap is where the learning lives.
Find the 10% truth.
Feedback does not have to be 100% accurate to be useful. Even when you disagree with a large portion of it, ask, “What if there is even 10% truth in this? What could that 10% teach me?” Curiosity keeps the brain open where defensiveness closes it down.
Build a secure enough sense of self to be wrong.
There is a paradox here. The more secure we are in our own worth and in our ability to learn and improve, the less threatening it becomes to discover that we got something wrong. Building self-efficacy matters. “I got this wrong” does not have to become “there is something wrong with me.” When our identity does not need defending, information can become information again – and we can use it.
Stay with the discomfort.
You do not have to agree immediately and you do not have to respond immediately. Make the goal not to run. Stay curious long enough to ask one more question. Reflect before you rationalise. Look for patterns rather than isolated incidents. Every time we remain present with an uncomfortable truth, we give the brain the opportunity to update.
The truth about growth
Perhaps our capacity for growth is not determined only by our intelligence, ambition or potential. It is largely determined by our ability to tolerate the moment when reality contradicts the story we have been telling ourselves.
Growth is not about how much truth we can find. It is about how much truth we can hold without escaping.
So perhaps there is one powerful question for all of us this week…
What truth about myself am I ready to stop running from?
The answer may be uncomfortable. It may also be where our next and most important growth begins.
And from that place, we can take Key Steps to…
‘be the difference that makes the difference.’
