Personal growth -the real key to success
As working professionals, growth has become key to our success and our future career paths. We grow to stay relevant. We grow to acquire new skills. We grow to meet the demands of our organizations and even to meet those of our competition. We grow to keep our options open. But more than anything, we grow to meet our greatest potential.
If we lived a life that denied us growth, how would we ever evolve or adapt to life around us?
Growth, at its core, is “the ongoing process of understanding and developing oneself in order to achieve one’s fullest potential.” We grow a little bit each day through the people we meet, the work we lead, and the challenges we accept. We grow as friends; family; colleagues and parents. We grow because innate to us all are feelings of wanting to become better than we once were. Tupac Shakur once said: “I want to grow. I want to be better. You grow. We all grow. We’re made to grow. You either evolve or you disappear.”
So, do we grow to avoid disappearing? As working professionals, growth has become key to our success and our future career paths. We grow to stay relevant. We grow to acquire new skills. We grow to meet the demands of our organizations and even to meet those of our competition. We grow to keep our options open. But more than anything, we grow to meet our greatest potential. After all, “the saddest thing in life is wasted talent, and the choices that you make will shape your life forever.”
Claudia Levac wanted all of these things when we chose to pursue her Executive Masters in Business Administration (EMBA). She was hungry for growth but also fearful of the demands that working full-time, raising two children, and going to school would have on her life.
Fear can sometimes prevent us from growing. It’s probably one of the biggest barriers to our personal development. But we should never underestimate the courage it takes to actively choose to pursue our own professional development. For Claudia, pursuing her EMBA allowed her to build her self-confidence.
“I needed to do this to remind myself that I am capable of succeeding with the difficult and challenging goals I set for myself. The real trick is having enough of an imagination or ambition to dream up the next ones.”
By day, Claudia works full-time as Business Manager with the Government of Canada — celebrating her 20th anniversary with the federal public service this past July (congratulations)!
In September 2017, Claudia started her first day as a candidate of the University of Ottawa’s Telfer EMBA — a 21-month program that would challenge her to refine her business skills and define what type of leader she’d like to become.
Claudia and I were actually colleagues during her studies, and I have to say that witnessing her growth from the sidelines was quite magical to watch. Every day I could see her passion, perseverance and determination grow. She was starting to learn to find her voice, and more importantly, to use it. She learned beyond the intended outcomes of her program, and truly learned about her self, her strengths, and her ability to never give up.
Even more inspiring was the fact that Claudia was not only a student and public servant, but also a mom. As young women, we already look at our career paths, and the expectations work puts on our lives, and fear how we can possibly manage being a mother too. Claudia challenged all these assumptions and proved that anything is possible. More importantly, she ensured that the space to do so was available to her — that her work understood the time commitment, that her partner could support her goals, and that she herself would be able to forgive the days she simply did not have enough energy to be the exact mom she wanted to be. What she did do, however, was set an incredible example not only for me but also for her daughters.
So, what inspired Claudia to pursue her EMBA?
“I wanted to push myself to complete a lofty and personally gratifying endeavour such as a graduate degree. I had looked into this years ago and there was nothing “for me” that I wanted to pursue. My husband also wasn’t sure about being able to take on the extra work given the time commitment. I stopped considering it and moved on. Two years later, I did a casual search again and doors started opening. It was a completely different experience. My husband said he was now “in” — especially since our girls were bigger and more independent; work was ready to support me; and, I myself was ready to stop looking and start applying. I was doing this for myself but also for my girls. I wanted to inspire them that if they ever wanted to do the same, it was possible. 24 years ago I saw my mother complete her own graduate degree and it pushed me that much more to want to complete mine too.”
Despite being extremely motivated to take on this new challenge, it also came with other challenges that pushed Claudia beyond the program itself.
“My biggest challenge was acknowledging and accepting that my life was going to change for two solid years. The program tells you that you will experience a “new normal” and they’re not kidding. I had to stop or modify many tasks that used to fall to me and ask for help. A simple example was cooking for my family. When I met my husband he was the Chief Breakfast Maker in our household but that was usually where his skills ended. I used to do the BBQ’ing because he would “Char-B-Q” whatever we were cooking. But as a full-time student, I had homework to do and the cooking fell to him. A happy bi-product of this whole experience was my husband’s new found experimentation in the kitchen!”
Personal growth really is all about finding that new normal. Growth requires us to change, and sometimes as a result, our lives around us change too. When we change, we create new expectations for ourselves and those around us. As working professionals, our personal growth forces us to question our surroundings, to question our career paths, and even to question what type of leader we want to become. For Claudia, personal reflection allowed her to become a deliberate leader.
“Prior to my Outside8, I considered leadership as something that was tied to a certain level. Now, it’s about defining leadership at every level and being picky about where I spend my “inside8” to align to that definition. I have to believe in what I am doing; it has to be purposeful. I have to continue to challenge myself.”
Our personal growth enables us to not only grow in our careers, but also grow as human beings. While this growth is sometimes triggered by talent or learning plans at work, the best outcomes are often those plans we invest in ourselves. By investing in your personal growth, you become the conductor of your own future and take responsibility on how you define success.
So, how will success look like for you?
