Have you reached a point in your business where your current level of skills are allowing you to maintain your success and results but you just can’t seem to get to the next level?
Have you fallen into the trap (that so many people do!), where you’ve reached a certain level of success in your business, but now you’re stuck on this plateau, never getting better, never growing, and you’re just coasting along…pretending you’re OK with where you’re at?
I call this the “good enough plateau.”
The good enough plateau is a place of comfort, where your existing skills are good enough for you to just show up, to merely maintain and survive.
Ultimately, the ‘good success’ that leaders experience at some point in building their business eventually prevents them from continuing to challenge themselves and grow so that they can experience the ‘extraordinary success’ to come.
It’s easy to see how the good enough plateau happens.
In our businesses and in our life, we achieve a certain level of success. And in order for us to get to that level, we have had to grow and evolve as a person.
We had to acquire new skills, push past our fears, and get out of our comfort zone to try new things.
And it worked!….for a period of time, at least.
The problem that happens so many times is that inertia sets in for a lot of leaders and then they get to the good enough plateau.A lot of you are probably at this exact place in your life and business.
The fact that you’re good at your business has become the enemy of you becoming great at your business.
The reason why you’re stuck is that you’re not willing to keep pushing into an area of discomfort, a place you’re really scared to be in once again!
Fear of feeling incompetent is the biggest problem leader’s face when they hit the good enough plateau.
“If you're not feeling scared, you're not growing. Growth is NOT a comfortable process.”
If you want to get to that next level in your life, no matter what that next level is, you have to continue to stretch yourself and attempt new things…..and failing!!!
Yes, I said FAILING!
And this is exactly where most people struggle — getting better, or ‘leveling up,’ requires you to become incompetent for a period of time!
And who WANTS to feel incompetent? Not I! And probably not you either!
We’ve gotten so used to looking good!
We show up and do our presentation. We are leading our team and teaching! We’re getting the shout-outs and accolades!
But, you can’t stop there. You HAVE to continue to stretch yourself and attempt new ways of doing business.
You have to become a different version of YOU. The current version of YOU may not be capable of getting you to the next level.
I’ve been to the good enough plateau myself.
I want to be honest. This isn’t just theory. The same thing happened to me!
I resisted doing videos for SO long.
I had achieved a level that, by anyone’s measure, was successful.
I resisted doing videos because I didn’t need to do them.
But, was this really the problem? No.
If I’m completely honest, the thing that was holding me back was that I was so used to looking good as a leader that I didn’t want to risk going live and NOT looking good.
I didn’t want to look awkward and incompetent!
I was eventually able to get over that, and what happened when I did was SO powerful.
Once I was ok with not looking good and began intentionally developing an entirely new skillset, I 6x’d my income. It skyrocketed!
Video is just one example. It’s just an example of when this happened to me.
But, these moments of opportunity have happened over and over throughout my career and will continue to happen.
In my business today, I can show up and do live videos with a snap of the finger! I don’t even have to think about it anymore!
But, I’m always asking myself, “What’s THE thing that’s scaring me right now? What is that thing that I could do that could make me better?”
Because here’s the thing….
If you’re not feeling scared, you’re not growing. Growth is NOT a comfortable process.
Do you want to be good or do you want to be great?
Do you want to be great or do you want to be extraordinary?
When you allow fear of incompetence to keep you at the good enough plateau, you become what John Maxwell calls ‘the lid’ on your own organization.
When the leader stops growing, they unconsciously become a lid on the people underneath them.
Here’s what I’ve found: You can only give to other people that which you have yourself.
As a leader, if you are not constantly learning, growing and evolving in your own business and life, you are limiting your ability to lead others.
When people see you trying new things, and they see you are not great at everything you do, it helps people relate to you. It makes you more human. It empowers the people that are on your team because they are more connected to your successes and your failures.
When was the last time that you did something for the first time? When is the last time you stretched yourself, risked not looking good, were willing to be incompetent? When was the last time you failed?
Figure out that skill that can take you to the next level, and don’t let your good become the enemy of your great.
