The Growth Trap – How Some People Abuse The Concept or Mistake It For Perfection

Personal development draws many of us into a journey of crafting a better version of ourselves in many facets, such as personality, skillsets, mindset, and more. Every time we gain insights from experience, we add another tool to our personal development toolboxes to deal with future challenges.

Most insights are acquired in two ways: (i) externally from books, seminars, or other people, or (ii) internally from personal reflections, subconscious processing of experiences, or actively working on exercises that transform our experiences into personal value.

As we discover throughout our journey, we are built uniquely in terms of personality, skills, and abilities. Any two people could be working on similar or deviant facets at any given time. Unlike school or traditional courses, there is no prescribed journey with an end goal identified from the beginning.

Progress in personal development is never linear nor one-and-done; it is a cascading journey. An area that represented a strength or asset for us long ago may have been neglected over time, requiring it to be a focal point to sharpen this season. The only thing that experience provides in personal development is better discernment of what we need to work on.

One of the significant keys to meaningful personal development is recognizing that our options do not yield equal investment returns. For example, an athlete with little artistic talent and ability might experience a marginal return on investment through working on their painting abilities compared to a budding artist gifted with a lot of creative potential but seeking structured instruction to master essential painting techniques.

While some personal satisfaction may be gained from the athlete trying something out of left field, if their goal is to transition their careers to continue making a living, they have a high probability of facing a major uphill battle. As the athlete continues attempting to make breakthroughs, their (lack of) progress may shake their confidence and make them feel derailed.

Athletes past their physical peak will often pivot into public speaking and coaching careers because they understand the mindset required to become successful athletes. These skill sets are built alongside their physical abilities since they’re required for execution, unlike their artistic abilities, which might be far less relevant.

However, remember that the best growth options for a transitioning athlete are a function of their circumstances, personality, and current skillsets. We need to be mindful when picking what facets of life to pursue growth to ensure that our return on investment is as high as possible, ultimately making us happier and more fulfilled.

Majoring In The Minors Hinders Relevant Growth

Unlike the athlete described––who maintained unilateral control over their personal development and career transitions––some people are not as lucky. It’s commonly known that the majority of young professionals find themselves under the leadership and management of others who may either be (i) subpar as professionals themselves, (ii) unfit to provide fitting growth advice, and/or (iii) don’t have their best interests in mind.

The dreaded performance review is infamous for nitpicking the smallest caveats in a professional’s performance, often blindsiding them by amplifying trivial matters when their important metrics are met or exceeded. Suddenly, a star performer with a minor and inconsequential flaw will major in the minors to please leadership, which costs them their performance next quarter and the company valuable productivity.

While destructive growth can come in many shapes and sizes, there are some underlying themes to watch out for when receiving advice. One of the best things we can do is approach this advice as a believer and a doubter to enable us to discern which direction is right for us. Here are some common trends to look out for:

A One-Size Fits All Approach

Before personal development became more personalized, solutions to personal problems were prescribed blanketly. These solutions were often more suitable for those in the military, who were required to adapt to the presented solutions. For those who don’t have a military mindset, this type of advice results in a lot of hit-and-miss.

Examples of this type of advice might include:

• “You just have to work harder.”

• “You have to keep your mind off of this and focus on that instead.”

• “You don’t work as hard as person X, therefore you can’t expect to have Y.”

• “You have to take class X to understand this.”

• “You need to have every detail polished for this to work out.”
  

There might be some truth to what is said above, but the solutions are either overgeneralized, convoluted with extra bells and whistles, or completely insufficient/misaligned with the problem.

Unfortunately, mentors and teachers who have naturally broken through some of their toughest challenges cannot comprehend how it takes others longer to overcome them. Consequently, the mentor’s growth advice is a poor match to their mentee’s situation, which produces more grief than relief. It’s unlikely they are giving unfruitful advice out of malicious intent, but rather because they’re inexperienced at helping others with similar struggles.

Advancements in psychology have confirmed that different people produce different responses to a given stimulus. Therefore, using a uniform solution to a problem that may stem from many different sources is a recipe for missing the mark and creating more frustration.

Intentional Tire-Spinning Advice

This type of destructive growth advice is usually more malicious. Intentional tire-spinning advice occurs when an authority figure assigns their mentee busy work to make them feel like they are progressing. The time spent on these meaningless activities is taken away from other relevant activities that move the needle forward.

Several examples below clearly demonstrate intentional tire spinning.

• A false mentor may keep someone busy or running in circles with trivial matters that don’t develop a mentee and sabotage their progress.

• A maligned manager may assign an employee a series of tasks that don’t matter to the organization and sabotage their chances of a promotion or, worse, increase the justification for letting them go.

• Ineffective teachers may give high-performing students busy work instead of assignments that extend and challenge them to perform better.

These cases are unified towards a common theme: paint a picture of making something insignificant become the primary focus for someone, and then blindsiding them with the truth. In the worst cases, these malicious authority figures will gaslight the person in question for not knowing better and then dismiss them dismissively.

This outcome creates a destructive ripple effect in the personal development community. New mentees seeking direction tend to lose trust in themselves to discern right from wrong and believe that growth is a sham. Additionally, future opportunities for legitimate mentors to provide the guidance and advice necessary to achieve those desired breakthroughs may be stifled.

Misaligned Personal Development Aspirations

This type of destructive growth occurs when someone is unsure of the next steps in their personal development journey. They may be juggling a few to dozens of next steps, but they cannot discern what is best for them.

To combat indecisiveness, mentees may default to a few options to avoid stagnation. For example, if someone they respect is working on something, they should also be working on it. While the spirit of competition from inspiration can be fruitful under the right circumstances, their selection may not be the best option for them at the time and cause them to derail.

Additionally, they may have experienced a minor bump in their personal development and believe they must do whatever it takes to correct it. This occurs when they forget to do something and become embarrassed about it, which causes them to hyperfocus on something minor and hinders progress in the majors.

While misaligned personal development aspirations may be harmless in the short term, since a lot of personal development requires trial and error, laser-focusing on these minor avenues in the long term will hinder progress and create personal despair in its wake.

Your Minor, Inconsequential Flaws Are Put on Blast

Have you ever had someone tell you that you were good at your job but that there was one thing they didn’t like, and if they could improve that one thing, it would be perfect?

The aspect they don’t like seems so trivial at best, and you know deep down that if you changed it, the level of improvement wouldn’t match the energy invested into it.

We’ve all experienced it to some degree. We attempt to remedy this minor flaw by seeking perfection to prove them wrong, which is admirable on paper, but the return on investment is marginal compared to other things we could be doing. When we engage in these pursuits, we give them the power to manipulate our actions towards pointless side quests instead of pursuing what’s right for us.

Leaders and managers must find and spotlight the smallest flaws in employees' performance in organizations with toxic cultures. They can’t give a perfect review because leadership would be accused of lacking a critical eye for reducing costs and improving operations.

It’s unfortunate, though, because the money they anticipate saving by denying an employee their raise is spent training their replacement after the current employee realizes how toxic it is and gets out of there.

The most effective employees, entrepreneurs, and freelancers realize that perfection should not be sought after in all areas. Instead, they leverage their strengths in key areas to progress in their businesses, careers, and crafts. Their pursuit of something more meaningful is making more impact than their quest to alleviate every chink in their armor.

How To Detect & Eliminate Bad Growth Advice

Initially, the line between beneficial and destructive growth advice is hard to differentiate. Our personal development journeys require trial and error, experience, and meaningful reflection to discern the difference better and pick what to work on. Unfortunately, some of us aren’t able to question the advice being given due to what’s at stake in our situations.

However, we must question the validity of all growth advice we receive. Most of our situations are temporary, which opens up options for discerning constructive and destructive growth advice.

Here are some tactics for detecting and eliminating bad growth advice:

Differentiate The Major & Minor Aspects of Your Personal Growth In This Season

Everyone is working on different facets of personal development, whether they are mindful of it or not. Some people are working on how they are perceived, some are working on their skill sets, and others are working on difficult transitions.

However, personal development without context is seldom fruitful.

For example, someone looking to work in a field with people might be better off working on their likability rather than a technical skillset so that they can relate to people. An athlete who isn’t sure how to nail the start must figure out a personal rhythm for themselves on when to expect the cue so that their start isn’t too early or too late.

We need to drill down to a handful of options because we have nearly unlimited options on what we can do. Some will make a minor impact from this handful of options, and a select few will make a major impact. Selecting and executing major impact action items makes all the difference.

Indeed, every chapter of our lives comes with new circumstances. We need to recognize that the things that worked in one chapter aren’t guaranteed to be as effective in the next chapter. As a result, we need to evaluate our personal circumstances objectively in every chapter and highlight the actions that have the highest probability of producing the best results.

The best way to do this is to document it in some form. Making two columns for circumstances and actions is enough for most people, whereas those who love sophisticated flowcharts might benefit from visually seeing the cause and effect behind them all.

Documenting is important because it will hold us accountable for success in this chapter, but revisiting what we’ve put on paper is equally, if not more important. This is where we get to see how accurate our perceptions of our circumstances are and make changes. Two things happen when we do it: (i) we get humbled and learn to adjust course, and (ii) we become happier with our results.

Apply & Measure Their Advice Temporarily To See If There’s Any Merit

As we have discussed before, when given gross advice, we must approach it with both belief and doubt. Sometimes, we don’t want to believe what we hear, but there may be some truth to it, so it’s our responsibility to handle it accordingly.

Whenever somebody gives you gross advice, you should ask them what they measure and how it affects the result. Tell them that you’re going to start with a couple of minor things and build up momentum, but in the meantime, evaluate the significance of their advice and see if it has any merit.

Once you’ve tried it out for a short amount of time, you should evaluate it and then return to ask if this is the progress they expected. In the best cases, they will agree and then back off. In the worst cases, they will pile on more things, which proves their pettiness even more.

Once you know they’re doing it for the sake of pettiness, you should look for workarounds against their advice. Aim to get out there and find the people and environment that work better for you.

Ask How Their Advice Compares To What You Perceive Is Important

If you’re feeling bolder or in a position where you can converse with the person, you should. Often, people give advice, thinking that you haven’t thought about a particular situation and that specific actions can affect the result. You can surprise them by showing them your point of view, clearly communicating your metrics, and showing what you believe is the key result.

In the best cases, you can open up a dialogue and find some middle ground between what they perceive to be important and what you perceive to be important. From there, both parties can converge on a plan on what they believe are important next steps and be on their way. It’s important to note that even though we know ourselves relatively more intimately than others, the perspectives of others are still important and should be considered when developing a plan for our personal growth.

See If Anyone Else Has Similar Experiences

This point comes from personal experience, but I once had an unsolicited mentor reach out to me and offer help to grow my career. Being young and ambitious, of course, I said yes. She invited me to a business leaders’ luncheon, where I met this mentor and proceeded to meet her with other people.

While listening to a few fantastic speakers during the luncheon, I kept getting bad vibes and weird stares from her. It’s as if my willingness to learn and pay attention to the speaker somehow bothered her. I decided to focus on the speaker, keeping in the back of my mind that this could be a red flag.

After the luncheon, she pulled me aside to get to know me better and see my career aspirations. As she asked me questions, I answered them and gave her some backstory here and there since we had gotten to know each other.

In the middle of one of my answers, she blurted out, “You talk too much.”

What. The. Hell.

I said I didn’t understand, and she proceeded to ramble about how I talked too much about my career aspirations. She made me completely uncomfortable, and I decided to get out as quickly as possible, feigning that I had an urgent phone call to make (thanks, Tim Ferris).

Later that week, I met with some business leaders who knew of this person. They told me of all their off-the-wall experiences with her and even said that I wasn’t the only one she ever did this to. I knew then and there that my intuition was correct when I got weird stairs from her after the luncheon.

I received an email from her the day before, but decided not to respond until I saw counsel from these business leaders. After confirming my suspicions, I replied that I was no longer interested in her advice, automated all her emails to junk mail, and disconnected her from social media across the board.

Admittedly, my experience left a bad taste, and it took me a while to trust mentors again. However, many principles came into play that restored my faith in mentorship, knowing that she was just a bad apple out of the many great mentors who are potentially out there.

I’m sure many people out there have had similar experiences. We’ve all had a situation where we were new to an organization and kept getting feedback from a leader on something we weren’t sure why it was important, only to be told by our colleagues that they do this to everybody.

This goes back to avoiding blanket advice and intentional tire spinning, where leadership has no interest in helping its people.

For The Bold — Stand Up To The Source

This final tactic is only for the boldest and bravest.

Those who can stand up to the source usually have options to see alternatives and get away from the source if need be.

When the evidence is mounting, and there are no reasonable doubts about whether a source is acting maliciously or mindlessly, the boldest and bravest should confront the source and let them know what they’re doing is either wrong or unintentionally steering people in the wrong direction. We all wish we could do this, but only a few of us will be able to pull this off successfully.

In the case of mindlessness, letting somebody know their advice is not helpful may be the best thing you can do for them. Their intentions may be good, but they’re unable to adapt to new circumstances in which advice no longer applies. It’s important to note that approaching these situations with the highest level of emotional intelligence is essential for keeping the relationship intact while addressing an issue.

On the other hand, there are times when standing up to malicious mentors is essential for them to get knocked off their rocker. There’s no guarantee of the outcome if we decide to do this, but in some cases, it may feel better to have at least tried than to hold the pressure in the bottle. Should we stand up to malicious mentors and leadership, we must assume full responsibility for all the risks involved.

Remember - Advice Must Always Be Applied In Context

There is no surefire way to flag bad growth advice. Advice should be taken in the black-and-white context, including what you’re reading right now. Advice that works when starting up a business doesn’t necessarily work to maintain it, just as the advice we heard for applying for jobs a decade ago has become more irrelevant today.

The best we can do for ourselves is increase our awareness of the potential effect of bad, gross advice and use our own experiences with the experiences of those we trust to discern for ourselves whether the advice is given to our advantage or disadvantage. In the end, nobody has a perfect batting average for applying gross advice correctly, let alone discerning what’s best for them and what’s not.

The next time somebody gives you growth advice, keep these tools in your back pocket. You can analyze what’s good for you and what is told to work against you. You can apply these tips wisely if you know your situation better than most people.

Do you have any stories about a time somebody gaslighted you with bad advice? Share them in the comments below!