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Are you ready to overcome plateaus and reignite growth in your organization? We uncover key strategies to propel your success, even in the face of roadblocks. Learning how to reflect on past wins and ask powerful questions can reignite momentum during challenges. Discover why seeking support is crucial to overcoming isolation and adversity, and how investing in technology, training, and systems can maximize your growth potential. Finally, explore how adopting an abundant mindset and sacrificing complacency can help you transition from good to great.

 

In this episode, Steve and Jason discuss:

  • Address organizational plateaus and strategies for renewed growth
  • Explore growth cycles: ups, downs, stagnation, and recovery
  • Ask reflective questions to learn from past successes and challenges
  • Invest in technology, training, and systems to propel growth
  • Adopt an abundance mindset to enhance creativity and progress

Key Takeaways:

  • Growth is a journey with inevitable ups, downs, and plateaus, offering opportunities to embrace challenges as natural occurrences and catalysts for progress.
  • Reflecting on past achievements through thoughtful questions uncovers valuable lessons and reignites momentum during difficult times.
  • Building a strong support network becomes vital in overcoming isolation and adversity, emphasizing the importance of collective strength during challenges.
  • Strategic investments in technology, training, and systems during growth phases act as accelerators, unlocking higher levels of success and innovation.
  • Shifting from complacency to an abundant mindset fosters creativity, enabling organizations to transition from stability to greatness by embracing risks and possibilities.

 

“An abundance mindset unlocks a sense of creativity that might not be there otherwise. When you're in growth mode, leaning forward instead of pulling back can open up fun and innovative ways to look at things.”

 - Jason Abell

Connect with Jason and Steve:

 

Listen to the podcast here:

 


Steve and Jason- Reigniting Growth

Hello, everybody. Hello, LinkedIn Live, and welcome to another episode of the Insight Interviews. This is at least one of your hosts, Steve Scanlon, and I am joined today by my partner in crime. I hope we don't commit any crimes together, but we can at least say that. This is Jason Abell, the president of Rewire. 

Hello, everybody.  Hey, Steve.

How's it going, man? 

Good to be with you today, my brother.  

Yeah. So, we get to do another LinkedIn Live event. It's always nice to be live with people, but this lives out on LinkedIn for a while, so, if it's live or if you're watching it at some other time, it's all good.  We treat it like it's live and so, I think we get to count that, Jason, like, you know, people that do Broadway shows as opposed to just film stuff, right? Like, I mean, we're in front of audiences, man. 

Exactly. Exactly. We are LinkedIn Live and an episode of our Insight Interviews.  So, you'll just live on LinkedIn, and you may hear this on a future podcast episode, which is exciting for us. 

See how we did that. It's very cool. Well, today, like you and I do, and I hope our listeners can at least appreciate this a little bit, you and I don't come together and go, hey, what do you want to talk about?  Like we actually think through some things and, you know, the work that we do here at Rewire, we're an executive coaching company and we've got a lot of coaches around the country and you and I get to not only do the work ourselves with our own clients, but we  have the great benefit of listening to our other coaches do the work that they get to do with our clients. And it's just really an amazing thing that you and I get to do.  And so hopefully one of the things that we do, Jason, is we try to find themes, you know, what's really going on here at Rewire. What are we hearing?  What are we seeing?  And what do we think would be relevant? So, we've got one of those today. We think we have come across a really cool, relevant thing. And as you and I were talking about it, you were like, man, I got a cool story I'd love to share about this. So talk to us. What do we got? 

Yeah, I've got a coaching client who recently started a new company. It's a startup and it happens to be doing just incredibly well, still in the early stages, but he's in a growth mode for sure. And he's got everybody on his little team rowing in the same direction and they're just cruising right along, and they are a hundred percent in growth mode. And even though I helped him create the plan and everything and certain goals before he even started the organization, you know, it really got you and me thinking, because as you and I do, and we do with the rest of our coaches, hey, we've got founders and CEOs that are in growth mode, but we also have founders, CEOs, and C-suite executives that are not in growth mode. Like sometimes the business isn't going in the right direction, and then sometimes there's plateaus. And so that's one of the reasons we titled today's session, reigniting growth, how to go beyond the plateau. So, what the story made me think of is, and I think we've even, I don't know if we have graphics or not here, but it made me think of this graphic where you've got things that are planned out and that are going right along exactly right. Like you're riding the bike, it's going uphill and that's the plan, and we're going to get to the flag at the other end. Like that's exactly what's going to happen.  But the reality is plans don't always go in exactly that way, right?  There are ups, there are downs, you hit a roadblock, your bike falls over, you get a flat tire.  Like sometimes you're going down and sometimes you're in that valley and then sometimes you plateau. So, there's all kinds of different places that you can end up along the way. So even though my particular client is doing well and he’s in growth mode, not all the time are we. Are we?

Yeah, no, one hundred percent. We're not. And you know, as you mentioned, you know, I think a lot of plans especially this time of the year, right?  We have so many of our clients planning for next year. Your client was doing that plan for his business, but as we think about the year ahead, we do want to go make these plans. And even when I think about the plans that we have for our business, we have an X, we want to get to Y and there's just something in my mind that just sees a graph from X to Y.

Yeah.

Right? But, along the way, you know, it doesn't always get to be like that. So, you know, look, and we recognize that if there were places that were ups and downs and pitfalls and stuff like that, we started to think about how we work with people in each of those areas.  And so, what we thought we could do today is we actually thought we could find some areas of where we work as coaches with people, and because there's so many different places on that, like, are you going down? Are you kind of going up, right?

There you go. We’ve got a little graphic here. I was having technical trouble. Sorry to interrupt you, Steve, but here's our graphic. You know, the plan is you just go up and you ride that bike and you're moving right along.

Yeah. Wouldn't it be great?  Like, that's what it is. Yay. We're all going to hit those goals. 

But here's really what ends up happening.

See, what you should have done, Jason, is like, hey, really quickly, I put together this thing and it just took you 10 seconds. 

Well, here's a good thing. Our plan before we hit live was that we were going to show these slides, and then as soon as we went live, the slides went away. So, I needed to find them again. So literally.

Did you notice me rolling with it? I'm like, no, this guy can't find the slides, right?

Our plan was this and then this actually happened. So, the metaphor.

You were down in the rocks, weren't you? You're going, oh no. 

Oh yeah.  I was. I was right around here.

But that's what you said about your client, right? 

Exactly.

I mean, he's on the way up and that's great. One of the things that I like about this particular slide, and I can't tell you how often I've gone to, you would think I would keep it somewhere natively on my computer. I'm always going to Stephanie going, get me this slide. Like, and she, she must think you should hold that somewhere. And the reason is, is because often in coaching, this is such a great graphical representation of how goals often go.  Sometimes we go down and we hit rocks. We saw that in the last couple of years with one of the industries that we work in because of the economics post COVID was actually somewhat brutal. For a lot of people, and they were in the rocks and then other people were like, no, that caused us to do this. And then we had to cross a traverse. And then sometimes it was like, oh, we got a boat to cross this thing that we're not even on a bike anymore. And one of the things I like about this thing is the trajectory is still up. 

Right on. Yep.

Right? And so, there's all kinds of sayings we have around this, right to, you know, one step forward, two step back, you know? That is more about how our goals go and this graphical representation to me is life-giving because sometimes if you're on the rocks or in the boat or under the clouds, you know, this is what Dr. Daniel Siegel called temporal integration. We're more integrated as leaders when we realize that these things are temporary. And so, one of the things that we wanted to bring to the table is how do we coach people through these particular realities?

Big time.

You know, you and I were like going, yeah, but if we were going to give coaching to, you know, we know the people listening to this, like your reality could be, maybe you're over there on the right going, woo. We made it. You're hitting it. Maybe you're on the left. Maybe you're in the boat. Maybe you're on your way up. And there's literally an infinite number of spaces that people could be on. We chose three. Like what if we could address at least three places and be who we are today in LinkedIn Live and just be coaches. 

Right. Yep.

So that's what we want to do. We came up with three different ways, Jason, really effectively that we might coach people through seasons. But you and I were both like, you know, it's three because we only have a half an hour, right? It could be a lot of different seasons.

And specifically, the seasons are sometimes, if you look at the bottom of our image here, reality, sometimes you are on that bike and you're going up and you're in growth mode, like the startup that I just talked about, one of our clients. Like, he's in growth mode and things are good and whatever. There are things that you want to think about and because we're coaches, I don't know that we're going to tell you what to do, but we do want to give you some questions to ask. One, when you're in growth mode, on the way up, we want to give you some questions to ask yourself and maybe your organization when you feel like things aren't going your way and you are maybe in the boat where this graphic reality shows he's in a little skiff there as opposed to just going straight up. Or maybe there's a rain cloud or two. Like, what type of questions might you ask with curiosity when you might be on your way down or feeling a backslide? And then also, when you're at the plateau, because there are plateaus. What questions might you ask then? And then we've got some questions that we want to pose. 

Yeah. Again, this for the sake of time, you probably did this for time because we want to get into those. I just don't want to underplay coaching and what coaching is really all about, right?

Yeah.

This is our podcast, and our LinkedIn live, so we get to say our best understanding of what healthy, great insight driven coaching is about, isn't about telling people what to do. Do this if you're down here, or do this if you're up here, or do this. And that's pretty common these days. A lot of people do that. Gosh, we find ourselves doing that with our children and our friends. In coaching, what we've really come to understand is we can help people create insights and we do that with effective questions.

Yeah.

So, you and I credited those three spaces on the way down, on the way up and on the plateau and we've got some questions. So, dive in baby. Okay, let's get rid of the one that doesn't feel as good, but it's reality, right? If we're talking about reality, we got to be real, right? It's not just, oh, it's always positive. No. Sometimes you're on the way down. If you've backslid, if the economy did this, if you had to lay off people, if business isn't quite what you wanted and you're on this, I don't know, Jason, throw one out. What's a really good coaching question that you might ask? 

Yeah, I would say this, you know, one of the things, and the first one that I wrote, I'm going to put my pocket, we'll save for a little later. But the first one that I would say is, okay, if you're feeling yourself sliding or if you're feeling stagnated, I think one thing, a branch to grab onto might be the question. I've been in similar situations before, whether it's in my life or my business, what has worked for me in the past? That to me is literally like I'm falling down a mountain, and I grab a branch. That branch is the question. What has worked for me in the past? I can grab that and go, okay, let me get my footing here.

Yeah, one hundred percent. Whatever you might be going through on the way down, your implication with that question is it's very likely that you've faced something like this and you're still here, which means you did something. What has worked? And that's a great branch. That's a great one.

And the other one is, this one may be a tougher one because, gosh, sometimes I've asked this question at the wrong time. It can feel a little stingy, but that is, what can I have learned from this? And when I say stingy, I mean, sometimes, if not posed at the right time or the right mindset, it can feel like, hey, quit trying to be positive on me right now. I'm hurting. I'm on my way down, but there's always something to learn because you'll be in a similar situation sometime in your future, whether it's organizationally or your life, and if you can lean on this experience right now, even if it doesn't feel good and you kind of lock away, what is it that I'm learning right now? It will help you in the future. So, what is it that I'm learning? 

And I think, again, I think that speaks to the power of coaching based on what you said. I think if people come to you and just throw that out and you kind of want to be like, don't ask me any positive stuff right now, I want to wallow here for a while, I think one of the most powerful things about coaching is the space that we get created. Sometimes we call it sacred space that we create with people, that when we get to ask that, are we going to learn here? Our clients know that we're not challenging them. We're not trying to not be real with them. Our work is to be that branch for them by asking that question with them. 

Yeah, at the right time. Yeah, that's exactly right. 

And even as coaches, we got to pick the right time, right? I mean, there is probably time to wallow in that for a little while.

No question. And then there's one last one. It's kind of my favorite one, if you will, of all of these, which is when you're in that situation, you do feel like you're under this rain cloud or you're in the water and you didn't anticipate being in the water, there's a roadblock there is really to look around and go, okay, who do I need around me right now? Like specifically who, what people do I need in my life or in my organization right now, and I guarantee there's people out there that will be willing to be a lifeline for you. 

And I love that one, Jason. I just think it's incumbent upon us to speak the truth to that one too. That's a great one to be reminded of because it's not always intuitive when you're in that pit. 

Yep. 

I mean, the fact that we're going down, I think that lends itself to isolation. So just saying, hey, who do I want to be around?  Like, that's not always really intuitive, so keeping that one in mind and courageously asking the question about who, because I don't think that one sometimes comes intuitively.

And to your point, I see all the time when organizations aren't doing good, typically they kind of turtle in like you're talking about isolation. And so, it can be a tougher one, but look, we're all human. We've all had ups and downs, including organizationally. Anybody that's involved in leading an organization has had tough and challenging times. And so, it's not this like, oh, I don't want to admit it because I might get found out or we're not doing as good as I want to look like I'm doing. No, no, no. Every single one of us is in the same boat. If you're in an organization, you've gone through some tough times. And so, to be able to look around and go, gosh, who do I need right now? 

We're going to get to the next one. My favorite part of that whole thing you said there is the fact that you use turtle as a verb. Come on. 

That's what you like.

I mean, if we were going to do another one of these, I would call this one, don't turtle, because you figured out a verb.

That’s exactly right. 

All right. See, isn't it funny?  Like let's move to the one where we're way up. Let's be done with that one. But reality is what reality is. What if you are on the way up and I've got some good questions. I'd like to throw for there, if you're on the way up. If I'm on my screen, I’m looking at those rocks, I'm in the boat, you know, but now we're going back up to the next flag and we're on the way up. Here's one of the things that I would ask. Who or what are you going to invest in? This is the time to make an investment. You're on your way up and I think just saying who or what will I invest in, because that investment will continue to catapult you on your way up. So, who or what will I invest in, I think would be a really great question and it's one that I use a lot with some of clients who are in that season.

Yeah. Whether it is the next new technology, whether it's something you want to experiment with, whether it is training your people, developing your people, creating systems, like sometimes those takes investments and whether it's an investment of time or an investment of capital, boy, when you're in growth mode, it can get overlooked, but it's such a great time to reinvest. 

And, you know, a question that comes to my mind, Jason, that's, that's related, but I just think of this as a time, actually, it's going to sound weird, it might be a time to risk. 

Yeah. 

So, what calculated risk does the organization or you as an individual, what calculated risk do you need to make?  

Yeah.

Right? That's a different question. We wouldn't probably ask that. Maybe you could when you're down and on the way down, but specifically on the way up, what calculated risks do you need to take right now? And it’s not about throwing caution to the wind. We don't want to do that, but on the way back up, that implies you were just down, right? So, on the way back up, we might have a tendency to turtle. I want to say that, but even on the way up.  And so, I think actually going, what calculated risks do we have to take right now in order to really maximize our way up would be helpful. 

And that question I have found with clients is one that just expands your mindset because you may be so focused on this particular growth strategy or whatever it is and you calculate it, it means just not risk caution to the wind, but no, like intentional and calculated risk. That's a question that sometimes gets people's creative juices flowing. And so, if you happen to be in an industry and you're listening to us right now, and you are on your way up, boy, that'd be a great question to ask yourself right now.

Yeah. And really the last one, I'm sensitive to time here. We had another one. I would just say, when I use the language of abundant mindset, my question would be, what does that mean to you in this season? 

Yeah. 

What does it mean to hold an abundant mindset? That is the question, right? Or how do we participate with an abundant mindset? You know, and again, we could probably, and maybe you can help us do that. That's juxtaposed really with a scarcity mindset, right? We've heard those concepts, but the whole idea of abundance and scarcity play a role on our way up. So, what does an abundant mindset mean to you on your way up? 

Yeah, this one is especially meaningful to me. One, because, you know, we hold ourselves out as mindset coaches at Rewire because we've just found through all the data and research that we've done that, boy, that's what matters, right? It is the mindset piece. And what you just mentioned, you know, I've seen organizations work from a scarcity mindset and just to teeth it out a little bit, that's like, you know, kind of being afraid. I think we did a LinkedIn live where we talked about operating from a stance  of, from the balls of your feet, leaning forward versus your heels, leaning back. Scarcity is almost your heels leaning back in a defensive posture. Abundance mindset is more leaning forward, and it just allows your brain to go, okay.  You know, under that umbrella of questions might be something like, hey, if money were no object, what would we do? If we had the best talent in the world, what is it that we would do? Like there's questions underneath that umbrella of, if I've got an abundance mindset, what does that look like? It kind of unlocks a sense of creativeness that might not be there otherwise, and when you're on the way up in growth mode, that can just be, this could be some fun ways to look at things.

Yeah, one hundred percent. I think it's so funny. Quickly, let's move away from abundance. Like I so want to just go live there. 

It's profound. Yeah, it's better there.

Yeah. Let's talk about being on the plateau. 

Every now and again. Like, you're maybe not in this big growth mode, but you're also not doing too bad. And I tell you what, Steve, I find many, many, maybe bell curve type of things. The middle of the bell curve of the organizations are on some sort of plateau. A lot of the organizations we serve are doing really good. They're doing really good, right? 

One hundred percent, and it brings us back to this graph, right? And I think the reason we think this is so relevant and meaningful. Maybe we should have sort of taken 30 minutes and just stared at this graph for 30 minutes and tell us what it means to you and where you are. Cause it can, it's just so meaningful. But there are, as you'll see, they're sort of where maybe some of those flags are like there's plateaus and like you said, sometimes you could take away business and growth life, right? This is like a life graph. But we apply this because again, the, of the work that we do in business, we're applying it to business. A lot of times we are on the plateau. So, here's a couple of questions or I'll throw out one, and maybe you can come up with another. I think the one that I often think to address with a client when we're in coaching and they're on a plateau, it just comes back to some of Jim Collins' work. Giving up the good to get the great.

For sure.

I think in that work that he wrote all those years ago, the enemy of great is good. When you're on the plateau, it's good. It's good. You know, we don't want to pretend like on a plateau, like no. Cashflow is good. It's good, except it begins to be flat, and flat is good. And so, the question I would have is, what good might we need to forsake to get to great? 

Yeah, so true. 

And that's a plateau type question. And I gotta tell you, there's a lot of coaching time that I've spent on that question, which is why I think Jim Collins' work on that is so brilliant, because he didn't say give up the terrible to get the great. No. Sometimes it's going to feel like we got to give up the good to get the great. So, the question would be, as you're on the plateau, you want to get great, you want to improve, we're trying to get somewhere. That's what makes us human. We're still on our plan. But when you're on a plateau, it's going to feel like, oh, I got to forsake something that by the way, got us here. 

That's right. That's right. Well, that leads to one of the questions that I wanted to bring up. When you're at this plateau is the whole, what got you here may not get you there thing, what systems, what processes do we need to challenge right now? I want to say this now, because I don't want to forget it, Steve. Boy, if you're coasting and it's good, and you don't want to mess up the apple cart, if you don't ask yourself some of these questions, it's only a matter of time before you start going down, right? We had a client one time, Steve. Remember that client in Texas? You're either green or growing or you're dead and dying or something like that. 

He or she may be listening, so, we got to be a little bit careful.

There might be some truth to that. I'm not holding that up, but if you're coasting along with good and you're not challenging a system, a process, if you're not asking what you said about, are there good things that we have to give up to get to great?  And even if you're listening to this and you go, I'm okay with not being great. I'm okay with being good. Well, guess what? If you don't challenge yourself or ask yourself some of these questions, it won't be that long before you're not good anymore. 

Exactly. And you brought up Marshall Goldsmith's work of what got you here, won't get you there, right? That's the other thing. And I think that's what you were alluding to on the plateau. Sometimes we hook into systems because they got us here.

Right on.

That worked. And then we stopped challenging those things or presume that that's just going to keep working. And it's one of the markers of being on the plateau is what guy. And that's why I think Marshall Goldsmith wrote that. So, you know, facing that, it could be a marketing system. Look at what we're doing in our organization right now. We were good.

Yep.

And we challenged and we challenged it. And now we're like invested in this other thing and it's painful. And I'm like, no, we'll go back to what we got us. And we can't. And frankly, we needed someone outside of us. We only knew what got us here, and so, we looked outside of us to go, how do we get there? And that was, I think us directly approaching our business with regard to us being on a plateau.

Well, what you just said there, right before we close, what we said on, you know, on the downslide, who do I need around me right now? I don't care if you're in growth mode, if you're going down or you're on a plateau, you can always look around and go, who do I need around me right now? Whether it's mentors, whether it's just plain old friends, whether it's new talent, whether it's coaches and trainers like us, the community of people around you matter a ton. And in fact, one thing I'll put up here, like we do at the end of every LinkedIn Live is I'll put up our little QR code. If any of this resonated with you and you're looking to have people around you to ask you tough questions or to ask you good questions, hard questions, however you want to say it, we're here to help. I mean, this is what we do for a living. And so, there's a QR code up on the screen right now. You can find us, get on our calendar. And I just want to say that, you know, these questions, they weren't willy nilly questions, right? Like when there's a particular situation that our client is dealing with, good, bad plateau, whatever, what we do as coaches is we come in and we ask very specific questions at very specific times. We do our best to ask them in the right way, in the right manner so you can hear them to unlock where you are now, to get you unstuck and to keep you going.

Yeah. And remember that there were a thousand places on that curve and those of us, I mean, between you and I, do you realize that we have close to 40-some-odd years of experience as coaches between you and I? That wouldn't even be counting up all the coaches. So maybe you're not always on a downside. We could only pick three places, but good questions surrounding yourself and we stand ready and that's what we do for work. And so, we're grateful for you. So anyway, dude, thank you so much.

Steve, well done, man. It's another wrap of LinkedIn Live and Insight Interviews podcast episode. So, until next time, be cool.

                                                                                                               ---

Thanks for reading. If you got any value at all from this episode, a little nugget all the way up to some big, huge insight, please do us a solid by subscribing, recommending, rating, and reviewing us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Google. That stuff matters to us, and it allows us to continue interviewing more awesome people.


Plan vs. Reality Graphic: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uSinY8we_ZEYArVyKMILHr9Odjxz4HnAfTTjpdIYQlk/edit?usp=sharing

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