Anyone who is an athlete knows that stretching is a good thing. The act of stretching helps to create greater flexibility in our joints and muscles. When coupled with appropriate strength training, stretching can help prevent injuries. This is so important in professional sports that Major League teams hire strength and flexibility coaches.
Stretching is also important for our personal growth and development which, in turn, is critical for our performance and the success of our organizations. In this case, we are not stretching our muscles, but we are stretching our “Self-Concept!” We all think we know who we are, and we often believe we need to be true to ourselves. But, if being true to ourselves means we fail to master the skills needed to perform with excellence, then we are hindering our own and subsequently our organizations capacity for success.
If I am the CEO of a company, I must realize that the first person who must learn to stretch my self-concept is me, but this doesn’t let everyone else off the hook. Every single person in the company must also learn to stretch.
How do we stretch our self-concept? First, we must understand that if we perceive the process as being hard work, we will be less likely to do the work. So, our suggestion is that we play at stretching our self-concept. Play is different from work. According to Herminia Ibarra (Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, 2015) the difference between play and work is all about the mind-set with which you approach the task. When you are working you are serious. You set goals, have time lines, and follow protocols and processes. When you play, none of that matters. You lose yourself in the fun. If you are curious about something you investigate it. You are not afraid to try new things. Failure creates some of our most laughable moments! That is so much different than work. Failure at work is painful and often detrimental to our careers.
Our suggestion is that you start playing with who you are and what you need to be. Don’t make your self-improvement work; make it fun. Play with it. If you need to become more outcomes focused because you are far more concerned with perfecting processes, then perhaps you play with ideas that start to ignore some of the possible details and begin to take action. To do this you will need to use a task that is more playful than “workful”, such as creating a new game or writing a silly story. You may find it hard to stretch yourself beyond what you normally do. You may find that you want to use the same process for doing these “fun, playful things” that you would use while doing “structured, ‘workful’ things.” Fight the urge. Let loose. Let it go.
Practice Stretching:
Step One: Start by recognizing how you usually do things and recognizing how others may perceive your preferred methods as being blockers to success.
Step Two: Think of what change others would like to see in you. Now create a playful process for helping you stretch yourself in that direction.