growth Archives | Ian M Rountree

3 Ways to Become a Giant

May 17, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

We all want to be bigger than we are.

Sadly, growth is complicated. Becoming a giant – no matter your field – takes time, diligence, and attention to goals. Where do we begin? Where do we stop? How much is enough, or too much? Which kind to focus on? Personal, professional, physical advancement?

Growth requires effort – and it can’t be faked.

Or can it?

It turns out there are a number of ways to give the impression of being bigger, without actually changing yourself at all.

Sleight of mind such as;

1. Standing on the shoulders of giants and pretending to be tall. This one’s a classic. Perfect example; managing to guest post on a high powered blog, and touting that as your “arrival” as an expert in your field. This isn’t just foolish, it’s ephemeral; your posturing is temporary, no matter how many places you reference your own success.
2. Make everything around you small – and pretend to be big. This is the worst. This is what happens when you attack others, constantly deride their work, and tear at the things they’re doing to be successful.

Why be that jerk? Why tear other people down, or focus on impermanent improvement and posturing?

Instead, why not focus on the ways you can actually get big?
3. Grow – and keep growing! This is the hardest – but also the best and most permanent of the ways you can grow. It’s difficult to find advice on how to grow, that isn’t either fluff, self-help, or vanilla cheerleading.

These have their place… For a while. But no one can really tell you how to grow.

So I won’t try.

Go figure it out for yourself. Tell us how it goes, ok?

Aspiration and Being In Love With Something

July 8, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

If you’re aspiring to something – you aren’t that something yet, are you?

Aspiration isn’t a bad thing on its own. We all have things we want to do with our lives. However, I’m finding I have a problem with anyone declaring they are an aspiring anything. “Aspiring marketer” or “aspiring author” – you’re basically claiming an adjunct to something that you aren’t. I could say I’m an aspiring fighter pilot, never do anything about it, and never be forced to lose the title associating me with airplanes. It’s misleading, not just to people I tell, but to myself as well.

Aspiration is not the same as enthusiasm.

Being an enthusiast is different, and it’s worth mentioning because people so often misuse the idea of aspiration to describe their status as an enthusiast. Being a media enthusiast covers a very different set of expectations, for the claimant and for their audience, than does a claim to being an aspiring media professional. Yet, we misinterpret the use of aspiration as being simply an extension of enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is a good thing – until it goes too far.

Fanatics and stalkers aren’t limited to sports teams and people. Stalking an aspiration happens more often than I think we’d like to admit; our ambitions usually push us to action, but in some cases, can become the cart before the horse, causing us to be led by our perceived calling.

Being In Love with a concept, position or personal trajectory, without recognizing the phenomenon, can be dangerous.

It’s off-putting. You’ve seen this happen – some of us have had it happen to ourselves, even. The pattern is always the same; someone begins to insinuate themselves in a situation, and eventually instigates some form of change. The aim, naturally, is to fix the problem, or arrive Just In Time to be the hero, and end up as a de facto thought leader.

Have you done this? I’ve done this. But I’ve stopped. You should too.

Being In Love with an idea – a process, a position, a job – is not a bad thing on its face, but to a certain extent, it’s limiting. This level of enthusiasm can be off-putting in some cases, or at least can serve to distract you from the real goal of producing meaningful work.

An aspiring novelist In Love with writing will never think anything’s good enough to ship out the door and call finished. An aspiring life coach who buys so thoroughly into their own message of personal worth that they can’t stand to be slighted in any way will never land prominent speaking gigs.

To a certain degree, falling out of love with your aspirations, and continuing to strive for them, is one of the major signs of real maturation and personal progress.

Love is good. Blinded love, not so much.

Image by Lawraa.

The Disciple / Apostle Conversion

May 4, 2010 by Ian 4 Comments

When was the last time you were promoted? What about the last time you found yourself alone, on a mission, without backup or resources? or the last time you realized you were no longer learning, simply doing?

How about the last time you changed position from that of a follower, to a leader?

It’s difficult. No one hands you a manual and says go to it. No one can possibly prepare you for the gap that you face when your accountability goes from being external – having a supervisor – to being internal, and doing the work for yourself.

The change, in part, can be thought of as the difference between being a Disciple, and becoming an Apostle.

It’s not an idea people give much thought to, so I’ll try to lay out the analogy fairly clearly. For awareness, I’m speaking strictly in the sense of the role, not in the sense of the historical, theological use we’re so accustomed to.

Basically, the difference is this; a Disiple is a booster, someone whose main role is support. They’re in a role to learn, be an aide, and grow as an advanced follower of a concept or person. However, the thing you’re following – the leader, the cause, what have you – always goes away.

As we grow, we lose the need for certain levels of leadership. Oversight becomes less beneficial. We learn all the lessons we can. So, eventually, that tether to the thing pulling us forward goes away. We out-earn our positions in companies, outgrow our mentors. Sometimes our mentors are taken from us by force. When that happens, we have a choice. We can either find a new cause, or continue the work underour own direction.

I like to think of this as the Apostolic Shift.

The Apostle is very different from the Disciple. Where the Disciple follows a Leader, the Apostle works largely alone. Disciples are usually kept close at hand, to directly aid in the work of the leader and the cause. Apostles often strike out on their own with limited resources and only the work of their hands and tools to prove their message.

They may gain followers, they may move toward something (such as a cause) but the Apostle has changed from being led, to steering their own ship. Some Apostles even begin to look for their own Disciples to help them do the work that has become larger than themselves. It’s a big jump, requiring more than just ability, training, experience or knowledge. It requires a drive that, frankly, the massive bulk of people simply don’t have.

If you’re out there, doing the work on your own, working for yourself in every situation, it’s likely that you’ve survived an Apostolic Shift at least once in your life. What was that like?