Learning From Your Own Growth Potential

We often hear about growing and utilizing our strengths. But what about learning from your own growth potential? From my experience, I would like to share the importance of recognizing this and learning from it.

I have become more "flexible" now, but I used to get frustrated when everything didn’t go according to schedule - and not anyone else’s schedule, but however way I had defined as the “correct” schedule.

I would immediately conclude that the reason why things weren't progressing was because of someone else. As a result, I was tormenting myself by getting frustrated and impatient, without others even knowing about it.

I realized this when I became a project manager for the first time.

For example:

• I delegated tasks without taking into account how much workload I was demanding onto others, resulting in significant delays of the overall project

• There wasn’t enough communication between myself and the team members on the real-time progress, resulting in not realizing some team members needed more time

This wasn’t only limited to the scheduling aspect, but also about communicating everything I needed to communicate to the other parties involved.

I thought had a good grasp on the scheduling myself, so my problem was that I just assumed that everyone else did, as well.

I now realize that it is important to plan comprehensively based on the assumption from the beginning that projects do not proceed as planned.

Also, being flexible does not mean that you have to follow whatever the other party desires, either.

There was a time when I had a lot of trouble with this part.

Who will suffer in the end if we only follow the other party's requests?

It’s really a balancing act.

I have learned the importance of always having a comprehensive point of view, and of holding on to the strong and weak points that are important when taking command.

And I think that this "comprehensive ability" - the ability to see things from a broader perspective and keeping a good balance between being flexible yet not being a push over - will be required more and more in various situations from now on.

This is part of the "survival power" that I sometimes talk about.

I think there are many people who know their own strengths and are able to convey these strengths to others.

However, how many of them can honestly admit that they have room for growth?

This is my experience, but it seems to me that many of those who reach the top are the ones who honestly accept their room for growth.

No one is perfect.

I feel that it is in the growth spurt that we learn the most valuable lessons, and it is in both our strengths and our growth spurt that our "humanness" is expressed.

I wish you all a week with as many smiles as possible!