I love growth. I love growing both personally and professionally. I love seeing growth in people. I love seeing growth in organizations. In fact, growth is one of my values as well as one of The John Maxwell Company values. Did I mention that I LOVE growth??

My growth goal is 1 percent daily improvement. I know if I can improve just a little bit every day, that over time my growth will be exponential. 

The growth that I’ve experienced over the past 16 years in serving John Maxwell and his organizations has been incredible. As I reflect on the first quarter of 2014, I feel like I’ve learned more and had more relevant growth conversations in the past three months than at any point in my career.

Following is a recap of some of the growth conversations and experiences that I’ve had at the beginning of this year and what I’ve learned:

Chris Fuller – Master Facilitator, The John Maxwell Company: In addition to our leadership workshops and coaching services we are looking to expand into leadership consulting. Chris has helped shape my thinking on how we can add value to our clients through consulting based on The 5 Levels of Leadership.

Senior Executive at one of the Top Training Firms – John Maxwell, Mark Cole, and I had an opportunity to have lunch with a senior executive at one of the training organizations that we most admire and discuss how they transformed their organization from being personality based into a sustainable organization that has extended beyond the reach and influence of the founder. One of our big takeaways from that meeting was to select and recruit “flame carriers”.

These are people that share the vision and DNA of John and The John Maxwell Company. They will be the ones to interface with customers as our coaches, consultants and facilitators. We learned from this executive the importance of these flame carriers having the character, competency, and passion that people have received from John over the years.

Mike Ferrell – Consultant: As we develop our consulting model, Mike helped me realize that we need to position our consulting services to focus on organizational best practices that operationalize our leadership principles.

Rick Packer – Consultant: We’re looking to develop a better defined process for selecting facilitators and coaches for The John Maxwell Company. Rick helped me think through a more structured vetting and training process for our facilitators and coaches.

ISA – The Association of Learning Providers: Along with Mark Cole and Chris Goede, I attended the Annual Business Summit of ISA. It’s a wonderful learning and idea sharing event attended by industry leaders in the learning and development space. We participated in a financial benchmarking survey and received a report as well as insights comparing The John Maxwell Company to other organizations in learning and development. It was a great learning exercise to compare the finances of our organization to the whole industry and specifically benchmark ourselves against other organizations of comparable size.  

I’m grateful for each of these growth conversations. In fact, each one helped my growth way more than my 1 percent goal. 

In addition to these learning meetings, I’ve read four fantastic books this year that have spurred my growth:

The Way of the Wild Heart, by John Eldredge – has helped my growth as a father to my son.
Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, by Meg Meeker – has helped my growth as a father to my daughter.
Sacred Marriage, by Gary Thomas – has helped my growth as a husband.
Not a Fan, by Kevin Idleman – has helped my spiritual development.

My challenge to you is to reflect on your growth journey over the first three months of 2014. What have you learned? How have you grown? If you’ve had consistent and tangible growth so far this year, CONGRATULATIONS! Don’t let up, keep growing. If you can’t articulate specific growth so far this year, that’s okay. You still have almost nine months in front of you to make 2014 your best growth year yet. Don’t delay! Start looking to have intentional meetings and ramp up your reading plan for the rest of the year. 

I’d love to hear about your growth and what you’re learning. Share with us below or on Facebook or Twitter. I look forward to hearing your growth story and learning from you.

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