How To Achieve Bolder Goals By Recognizing & Pushing Through Your Growth Edge - Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast

Summary

Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast Summary

Episode: How To Achieve Bolder Goals By Recognizing & Pushing Through Your Growth Edge
Host: Brooke Richie-Babbage
Release Date: January 14, 2025

Introduction

In this episode of the Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast, host Brooke Richie-Babbage delves into the concept of the growth edge—a pivotal point where an organization’s comfort zone meets the potential for transformation. Drawing from her extensive 25-year experience as a social justice lawyer, two-time nonprofit founder, and growth strategist, Brooke aims to equip nonprofit founders and leaders with the mindset and strategies necessary to achieve ambitious goals without succumbing to burnout.

Understanding the Growth Edge

Brooke begins by defining the growth edge as the juncture where an organization's existing practices and comfort zones confront the possibilities of substantial growth and transformation. She emphasizes that recognizing and pushing through this edge is crucial for achieving the success leaders envision.

“A growth edge is the point where your comfort zone bumps up against the potential for true transformation.”
— Brooke Ritchie Babbage [02:30]

She explains that venturing beyond familiar territories often triggers the brain’s defense mechanisms, seeking reasons to maintain the status quo and resist change. This internal resistance can manifest as a blend of excitement and fear, presenting significant challenges that can either hinder or propel organizational growth.

Recognizing Signs of Hitting the Growth Edge

Brooke outlines several concrete indicators that leaders may be approaching or have reached their growth edge. Recognizing these signs is the first step toward navigating them effectively.

1. Overthinking

Overthinking, or analysis paralysis, is a common barrier that prevents action. Leaders may find themselves stuck in prolonged periods of deliberation without making tangible progress.

“When I find that I am journaling a lot about something... you look up and it’s been three months and you’ve made no progress and made no decisions.”
— Brooke Ritchie Babbage [10:15]

2. Distraction

Focusing on smaller, less important tasks allows leaders to avoid addressing more significant challenges. This redirection diverts attention from critical issues that need resolution.

3. Procrastination

Procrastination can take various forms, such as procrastaplaning (creating extensive plans without action) or becoming a procrastalearner (constantly seeking information to delay taking steps).

“When I am bumping up against a growth edge in my business, I will find the coaching program, read the books, come up with a plan...”
— Brooke Ritchie Babbage [15:45]

4. Imposter Syndrome

Leaders may experience self-doubt and feel unprepared to lead larger teams or manage more complex organizational dynamics. This internal conflict signals that they are stepping into new, demanding roles.

“They feel a little bit of the imposter syndrome as they step onto the bigger field.”
— Brooke Ritchie Babbage [20:30]

Responding to the Growth Edge

Upon identifying these signs, Brooke provides actionable strategies to navigate and overcome the growth edge.

1. Reframe Fear as Empowerment

Transforming fear and discomfort into signs of growth helps leaders view challenges as opportunities rather than threats.

“Reframe the fear or the discomfort that you're feeling as empowering and about potential.”
— Brooke Ritchie Babbage [25:10]

2. Create a Clear Vision

Using tools like Google Docs and setting aside dedicated time can help leaders articulate what lies beyond their growth edge. Visualizing success provides motivation and clarity.

“Set a timer for 15 minutes... create a really clear vision for yourself of what's on the other side of this growth edge.”
— Brooke Ritchie Babbage [27:45]

3. Break It Down

Focusing on small, manageable steps prevents overwhelm and facilitates steady progress toward larger goals.

“You don’t have to see how everything will resolve itself immediately... just ask yourself, what's the first or next step I should take?”
— Brooke Ritchie Babbage [30:20]

4. Get Help

Engaging with mentors, coaches, and peer groups provides essential support and accountability. Brooke underscores the importance of having a community to navigate growth edges effectively.

“Make sure you have mentors, a community of practice with a small group of peers... a coach in this space is huge.”
— Brooke Ritchie Babbage [32:50]

She also references her playlist on high leverage leadership, which covers topics like creating mastermind groups and the four types of support leaders need: mentors, coaches, advisors, and peer groups.

Conclusion

Brooke concludes by reinforcing that navigating growth edges is an inevitable and cyclical aspect of organizational development. By recognizing signs of reaching the growth edge and implementing strategies to push through challenges, leaders can unlock their organization's full potential and achieve ambitious goals sustainably.

“Building the skill of recognizing when they show up... will help you gain clarity and confidence in your leadership.”
— Brooke Ritchie Babbage [40:00]

She encourages listeners to engage with additional resources, leave reviews, and subscribe to her newsletter, Leadership Ford 321, for continued insights and support.

Key Takeaways:

Growth Edge Defined: The intersection where comfort meets potential for significant transformation.
Signs of Growth Edge: Overthinking, distraction, procrastination, and imposter syndrome.
Strategies to Overcome: Reframe fear, create a clear vision, break tasks into manageable steps, and seek support from mentors and peers.
Continuous Growth: Embracing and navigating growth edges is essential for sustained organizational success and leadership development.

For more insights and resources, visit brookerichybabbage.com and explore the linked playlists and show notes mentioned in the episode.

Transcript

Brooke Ritchie Babbage (0:02)

Welcome to the Nonprofit Mastermind podcast. I'm Brooke Ritchie Babbage. I've been in the social impact game for 25 years as a social justice lawyer turned two time nonprofit founder and leader turned growth strategist and coach for leaders around the country. I grew my nonprofit from me and an intern in a tiny closet to a high impact seven figure organization. And along the way I learned so, so much about how to build an organization that has real impact and how to do it without burning out. In this podcast I share the nuts and bolts of all of it so you can do that too. We dive into the mindset, strategies and tactics of how to scale a high impact organization and how to do it in a way that's truly sustainable. Today, I want to talk about one of the biggest things that undermines people's ability to hit their goals, especially if those goals are new or bold. It's called the growth edge and it is really important that you recognize and push through your own growth edge if you want to achieve the success you've mapped out for this year. In this short but high impact I hope episode, I'm going to highlight how to recognize and respond to your own growth edge so that you don't undermine your own efforts at personal and organizational growth. A growth edge is the point where your comfort zone bumps up against the potential for true transformation. You've had the team you've always had and you know in your heart that you need to change things up in order to get to the next place the organization is going. You've run X, Y and Z program a certain way forever, but you just know in your gut that it could be more or bigger or better. When you start to head out of your comfort zone and you think about your next set of goals, especially like I said, if they're new or bold, that's when your brain starts to protect you. Your brain starts looking for reasons to stay small, to not change. Now, it's not always obvious that this is what's happening. The growth edge is almost always experienced as some blend of exciting and really terrifying. For that reason, growth edges in our organizational growth often show up as a challenge or a set of challenges. Like deep level friction on your team or realizing that your board feels inoperable, like it just cannot move forward, can also show up as rationalization. Like why now isn't the right time to do something like start calling potential donors on the phone or fire the people on your team that you know have to go or to have that tough conversation with your board Right. All of those things, when you start to see them, are often indicators that you are bumping up against the limit of where you currently are. You cannot grow unless you push through those challenges and set aside the rationalizations. So I want to get concrete for a minute here. Here's some concrete signs that you might be hitting your growth edge. So be on the lookout for these. And I also want to say, we all do this. So if some part of your voice is saying, nope, I don't have a growth edge, or, nope, none of these are going to apply to me, or that's not actually my thing, my thing is the other thing, actually. Everybody is at some point going to bump up against a growth edge. And the way forward, the way to not feel the friction on your team, not feel the constant sense of overwhelm, involves, in part, recognizing being honest about and pushing through these growth edges. Okay, so here are some signs. First, overthinking. This is a big one for me personally. Analysis paralysis as a way to avoid action. Right? I am a huge overthinker. And when I find that I am journaling a lot about something, that I am talking through the same challenge in the same way for months, right? I am not talking about the deep analysis we ought to do around things that are troubling. I mean, you look up and it's been three months and you've made no progress and made no decisions, and you are still sort of trying to figure out how to analyze your way out of the challenge. That's overthinking. And like I said, been there, done that. That's recognition of a growth edge. And for me, the last time this showed up, it involved someone on my team. And I realized after 11 months of talking about the same thing with my mastermind, with my business accountability partner, with my coach, with my husband, that I was sort of stuck in this overthinking phase. Okay, Second distraction. This is also something that a lot of the folks that I work with will sort of fall into, focusing on smaller, less important tasks so that they don't actually have to push through the big, more challenging one. I'm going to respond to these 10 emails, and then I'll think about what to say to my board chair. Right? I'm going to draft this funding proposal, right? So the smaller tasks aren't necessarily things that it's not like scrolling on social media necessarily. It's just doing things with your time that allow you not to address the challenge, push through the growth edge, et cetera. Third, this is a big one. For me as well. Procrastination. This for me shows up often as procrasta planning. Right. I'm not a huge, just general procrastinator, but I am a procrasta planner. I will have lots of plans. Procrastial learner. That's also a thing that my business bestie Ria has pointed out about me. I am absolutely a procrastal learner. It's linked to overthinking that when I am bumping up against a growth edge in my business, I will find the coaching program, read the books, come up with a plan about how I'm going to learn what I need to learn to get past the thing. So if that sounds familiar to you, definitely a sign that you're bumping up against a growth edge. The next one is one that I work on a lot with the folks in my program and that's imposter syndrome. And the reason I think it comes up so much in my coaching program is because all of the groups that I work with are in a growth stage. These are organizational leaders that are at an inflection point that know that their organization is ready to play on a bigger field and they want help getting onto that bigger field, feeling comfortable on that bigger field. And also they feel a little bit of the imposter syndrome as they step onto the bigger field. Right. They don't really fit leading a bigger organization. They know what it means to lead a small, scrappy team, but they can't really picture themselves leading a highly competent, well functioning team of 15. Right. As opposed to four. Feeling like they aren't ready is huge. That imposter syndrome is big and very much an indicator of on the edge of growth. Right. So your question is I'm not ready for what? Right. What would it feel like to be the leader, a confident leader of a bigger team, to work with the board differently, to have different funder relationships? So I highlight these because when, not if, when you start to recognize some or maybe all of these things showing up in your own organization, in your own psyche, in your own team, then what I want you to say to yourself is, wait, is this a sign of some growth edge I need to pay attention to? Is this habit or practice, et cetera, actually a symptom of a deeper bottleneck blocking the growth and impact I want to have? Right. So you don't have to immediately accept the fact that you're procrastinating or you're overthinking or your distractions or the fact that you look up after three weeks and somehow you haven't gotten to that convers that you've been meaning to have or the funder breakfast that you've been wanting to plan. It just keeps getting bumped by these other smaller things, right? Or even just emotional resistance and discomfort. Right? Emotional risks. Like tough conversations. When you have those, ask yourself, what could this be blocking what is on the other side, right? When you ask that question, something really powerful happens immediately. You are able to frame your challenges and discomfort as a sign that you're actually doing something right. You're actually moving in the right direction. The reason that you are experiencing this with your board or friction on your team or, or sort of fear around connecting with this new donor or funder that could really level up your funding isn't because you are a bad leader. It is because you are at the point where this is what leaderships address, what leaders address. Like this is what leadership means and you're moving in the right direction. Now if you think about that for a moment, that's really powerful. It's not that you're messing up or leaving the organization wrong. It's actually a sign that you're just outgrowing the place that you were. So the exciting and terrifying next question is, what's on the other side of this challenge or growth edge? So I have a few recommendations about what to do when you recognize and acknowledge a growth edge. First, reframe the fear or the discomfort that you're feeling as empowering and about potential. Right? See it as a sign of growth, not just danger. Second, take a little bit of time and a lot of times with the leaders that I work with, I will recommend pulling up a Google Doc, a blank Google Doc, setting a timer for 15 minutes, right? So that it feels a little contained. Create a really clear vision for yourself of what's on the other side of this growth edge. What is the potential here and what would it look like to sit in that new space? What could you do with a new team? What would it look like to lead a bigger team to be in partnership with your board? What would happen if some of those donors that you picked up the phone and called said, yes, we will give you a five figure gift? What could you do with a newly constituted advisory group? Third, break it down. What's the very first thing you can do to push through the challenge? You don't have to see how everything will resolve itself immediately or really ever. All you need to do is focus on the next small step to move you in the direction of that vision. You created. You don't want to think about having to tackle the whole challenge at once. Just ask yourself, what's the first or next step I should take? And finally, and this one's huge. Get help. Make sure you have mentors, a community of practice with a small group of peers who are sort of on your path and are navigating their own growth edges. A coach in this space is huge. I cannot tell you how critical my own coaches have been to helping me see, acknowledge, get comfortable with and push through my own growth edges. Now I talk about some of this in some past podcast episodes. I'm going to link to them in the show Notes. I've created a playlist on high leverage leadership and it talks about the why and how of creating your own mastermind group. It talks about the four types of support you should have a mentor, a coach, advisor and peer group. So if this is work that you are thinking about for your own leadership, I definitely recommend checking out that playlist and that will be linked in the show notes. Here's the thing. Every single one of us navigates through growth edges. It is an inevitable part of growth. Like it, you will not grow, but through moving through growth edges. Some of them will be easier, some of them will be harder, but they are constantly there. It is a cycle of hit your your sort of the limit of your current stage of development and growth. Push through the growth edge and keep going. Especially if you are in a leadership position, you will be more aware of these. So building the skill of recognizing when they show up in your life and building some practices that help you push through them will help you gain clarity and confidence in your leadership. And if you continue to push and grow and do the work, it unlocks the potential for your organization to actually achieve the goals that you want to achieve without burning out along the way. I hope that this was a helpful episode. Definitely check out the playlist for some other related episodes and I will see you back here next week for more Mastermind thanks so much for joining me this week. If you enjoy this podcast I would love for you to leave a rating and a review. I read every single one and they really do matter. I also share extra tidbits and resources building on what we talk about here in my newsletter, Leadership Ford 321. You can sign up by texting the word impact to 66866 and finally, definitely check out the links and resources that I mentioned in this episode@brookerichybabbage.com podcast. See you next week.