The more time you spend in your discomfort zone, the more your comfort zone will expand.  – Robin S. Sharma

In workshops with new leaders I like to use quick electronic polling that participants can respond to on their smartphones. It’s a good way to get a sense of the room while soliciting candid answers people sometimes hesitate to give in front of peers. In a leadership development training, for instance, I might ask, “What most concerns you about starting out in your role as a leader?”

As participants type into their smartphones, their anonymous answers populate a large screen in front of the room. Here’s what frequently shows up:

• Looking like a jerk
• Revealing that I don’t know what I’m doing
• Losing the friendship of people I used to work with

These answers become especially significant in leadership development training because (1) some variation of them always appears among the top three, and (2) they give us one way to discuss a key factor affecting all people managers, especially new leaders: the pull of the comfort zone.

There’s an interesting connection to follow here: When people are asked to name the most damaging habits of past managers they’ve had, the most egregious complaints include:

• Not holding (other) people to requirements
• Not correcting problem behavior
• Procrastinating on decisions

What these behaviors all have in common is that they often result from trying to avoid the three fears mentioned earlier: Looking like a jerk, Revealing that I don’t know what I’m doing, and Losing the friendship of people I used to work with.

New leaders will sometimes stay firmly in their comfort zone in order to avoid those feared outcomes. And then, guess what? They may fail to hold people to requirements, neglect correcting problem behavior, or procrastinate on decisions, not wanting to displease anyone. Worst of all, they fail to develop confidence, expanding their comfort zone.

How can you know if you’re staying in your own comfort zone too much, perhaps to the detriment of the people you are leading?

Ask and Assess

Ask a mentor or trusted colleague to talk candidly with you about whether you are playing it too safe in your leadership of others.

Take trusted, reliable assessments that provide you with detailed results. Two I especially like are the Talent Insights Assessment (we get ours from Target Training International) and the Leadership Blindspots Assessment (from Princeton Management Consulting).

Both provide tons of insight for new or experienced leaders–in the case of Talent Insights with a robust personalized, 46-page report that includes a section on operating outside your comfort zone.

Set Concrete Goals

Just as you would with any other change you want to execute (hello New Year’s resolutions), set concrete goals and create timelines. Use the SMART goal system if that works for you: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound.

For example, a simple do-able goal might be to reserve 10 minutes each day to ask yourself, “Who on my team is not quite meeting requirements? Who is exceeding expectations?” Choose the most high-impact thing and jot down what you think you should do or say to correct or to praise and reinforce, as the case may be.

In most instances, you don’t need to take the action that very minute. As you build your confidence, let the decision sit for a few minutes or hours, even overnight on occasion. Just be aware that NOT making the correction, or praising the positive actions will have ramifications—just not ones that you see immediately. It’s often useful to recall the advice of Stephen Covey in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Remember to spend time on  your ‘Important but not Urgent’ items since this is the category where you can make the most difference in your own and others’ lives.

Comfort is good. But confidence is better. And that’s what you get when you step outside your comfort zone.

Do you have a tactic that helps you step outside your comfort zone? Join the conversation below.

If you’d like to learn more about leadership development training, assessments, supervisory training, or workplace communication, just go to our training workshop list or click on Contact us. We’d love to hear from you!