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Chapter 1
Doing Battle with the Comfort Zone
Before you can become a transformational leader, you need to know your challenge.
Transcript
Before you can become a transformational leader, you need to know the challenge. When you challenge the status quo, what do you come up against is the comfort zone, which is the inertia that keeps people stuck where they are. To fight it, you need to understand it. First, remember that those who are comfortable are not growing. This is one of the reasons that adversity is so often the catalyst for change. We are forced to rise to the occasion by digging deeper than we thought we could and developing new skills and capabilities, we weren't sure we could master. Another thing you need to know about comfort zones is that they are not static and they can close in on you if you don't pushback. For example, let's say you break your arm and you need a cast. When the cast comes off six weeks later, do you think your arm will be bigger, smaller, or the same? It's smaller because when you don't use muscles for a period of time they atrophy, our life and comfort zones are the same. If we stay in a comfort zone for an extended period of time, it will start to inhibit our ability to do more. We need to actively push out on it and test it. When fighting the comfort zone, you need to encourage your people to pushback and get them comfortable with being uncomfortable in order to move to the next level.