The Four Cs Mini-series: Challenge

Challenge, how to stretch people without snapping them. this is what we'll be talking about today on how to lead the podcast for CEOs, founders, and leaders who want to find the perfect balance of authority and empathy. My name's Kate Waterfall Hill, and I'll be sharing some ideas from over 30 years of working in business and leadership development.

Before we get started, a quick reminder that my new leadership Accelerator premium program is now open. It's a 24-week plan, combining on-demand video lessons, weekly group coaching, live workshops, disc profiling, And Institute of Leadership Certification, all within a supportive community of leaders like you.

Places are limited. So book now for yourself or your team members. Find out more at www.waterfallhill.co.uk.

This is the second in a short mini-series where I'm exploring a leadership model that I share in my book How to Lead. It's called the Four Cs, and it outlines the essential ingredients for team engagement, from the research I've done and the experience I've had over my career.

Firstly, we talked about clarity, knowing what's expected and how you contribute. Today we're talking about challenge, being stretched and stimulated to grow next time and the week after control, having some autonomy with the right support, and then community feeling valued and part of something. So, we've already looked at clarity, as I say, but today we're diving into challenge and what it really means to help people grow at work.

Let's start by having a look at how Linda handles giving her team a challenge,

“Apparently you're supposed to make sure that your team members are in the right zone when it comes to work, not in their comfort zone and too comfortable, and not in their panic zone and too panicky, but in stretch zone some of the time, and then comfort zone some of the time. Well, that's a load of mumbo jumbo, isn't it?

My people seem to be one of two extremes. They're either in the snooze zone, absolutely, completely disengaged, zoned out, but all there is crash zone. So they've gone beyond panic and they're on the verge of being signed off work, or actually are off work. I don’t know how I'm supposed to get them back into this perfect place where they're comfortable but stretched at the same time.

Oh, I suppose we could do some resilience training or something. I know. What about mandatory journaling? Everybody has to sit down for 20 minutes every day and journal about how grateful they are to be here. Would that work? Do we think?”

Right, so with being publicly thrown in at the deep end with no context, followed by a 360-feedback session and a mandatory resilience course was your idea of growth, then perhaps you are more like Linda than you think you are.

Let's talk about why challenge matters. It's one of those slippery sort of things. You get it right and people feel proud, stretched, motivated, and ultimately engaged, which is what we are looking for. get it wrong, and you'll have confusion, avoidance, burnout, or people quietly deciding to apply for jobs that involve fewer panic attacks.

The best kind of challenge doesn't overwhelm people. It stimulates them. It grows people without grinding them down. When your team isn't challenged enough, you see boredom, passive behaviour, reduced effort or creativity and that sort of energy where people just come across like, I'm just here to do my job.

Yet when they're over challenged. We tend to see anxiety creeping in perfectionism or procrastination can take over and people start making more mistakes, not fewer. They then lose confidence in themselves and sometimes, dare I say it in you as their leader. So where's the sweet spot?

I like to think of it as a continuum, the comfort, stretch, panic model. You've probably heard this before, but it's worth revisiting. Picture three concentric circles at the centre, the comfort zone, familiar, safe, but maybe not much growth. Then you've got the stretch zone. A bit uncomfortable, but manageable and then outside that is the panic zone.

Everything feels risky or out of control. So your job as a leader is to help each person sit within their stretch zone more of the time while dipping back into comfort zone for recovery and avoiding the panic zone as much as possible. Although sometimes it's not achievable.

People get into panic zone when they're launching a new project, when they're having something that's really testing. Maybe you as a business owner have found that when you launched your new business and Panic zone is sometimes inevitable, but it's not sustainable for very long term.

You want people to be stretched so that their capability and their comfort zone actually stretches too. If people are in their comfort zone, some of the time stretch zone some of the time, this is where your people will build a sense of capability, more courage, more competence and growth happens at the edge of their ability, not outside of their reach.

So, the tricky bit for the leader is that not everyone finds the same things challenging in the same amount. And what stretch someone last year might be comfort zone material. Now. For instance, you might have a junior member of staff who feels really challenged by presenting to their own internal team.

The senior person might feel stretched taking on a project with external stakeholders, and then an introvert might find a client pitch far more draining than a data deep dive, which might feel you with threat. So, this is where regular one-to-ones are pure gold. You need to ask your people what's challenging you at the moment?

What would feel like a good stretch for you, but not push you into panic zone? And. What are you ready to try that you haven't already?

So you're not just assigning tasks here. You're actually helping them expand what they believe they're capable of. So how do you actually introduce healthy challenge? I've got some practical ideas to build appropriate challenge into your team's day-to-day activities.

Here are five different ideas. Firstly, give stretch assignments. So ask someone to lead on a new client project maybe, or facilitate a team session. Support them, but don't hover. Secondly, encourage problem solving. So instead of you always jumping in to solve the problem, ask people when they come to you with an issue, what would you think would work?

What would you like to do? What have you thought of? Now it's slower at first to encourage problem solving, but in the long run, it enables people and it's really, really powerful and it'll enable you to be able to delegate more.

Thirdly, I really like the use of what if questions. So what have you led that meeting? What if we let you try a different approach? What have you trained somebody else in that process? So this opens the door to growth without too much pressure. You also want to invite people to higher level conversations.

Expose them to the strategic side of work. Even if they're not ready to contribute, yet, being in the room matters and it will rub off on them. Seeing how it's done. Being open to these higher-level conversations is really engaging and in enriching for people. And then lastly, on this list of five, create mini projects or experiments.

So look for a low-risk way of testing things. So it might be a new tool or a process or idea. Give someone the chance to step up without the risks or the stakes being too high.

This is good for both you and them.

I talk about psychological safety quite a bit, and it's, it's not the buzzword you might think it's actually a really important part of leadership because you can't stretch people without safety.

If they think that failing will lead to humiliation criticism, or a black mark or something on their record, then they'll stay safe or they'll burn out trying to be perfect. So it's up to you as a leader to create a climate where trying something new is seen as a positive, where failure is framed as learning and where reflection is all part of the process.

And you need to be role modelling this as well. So you could say to somebody, look, this is a stretch and that's okay. I'd rather you had a go and learn something than we waited for the perfect conditions.

Now, I'm encouraging you to challenge your people here, but I want you to watch out for introducing challenge and then walking away. That's not challenging. That's just abandoning somebody. So check for these signs that someone might be in their panic zone. So if they're avoiding tasks, if they're apologizing all the time excessively or staying silent in meetings, or maybe they're getting really emotional or defensive in their responses where you didn't expect them maybe overreacting to something, they wouldn't have normally been over reactive about.

When that happens, it's time to be curious. Maybe you need to step in, don't rescue them, but do reset expectations and ask them some really good coaching open questions. So what's feeling too much right now? What would make this feel more manageable? I notice this seems hard for you.

Can we talk about that? Support is not the opposite of challenge. It's what makes challenge sustainable.

There's a lot of work in the parenting community about praising children too much, and it's sort of similar with your team because if you want people to accept a challenge, you also need to recognize the effort as well as the outcome.

So be clear about the fact that somebody made an attempt, that they showed some courage That they developed a good process. Maybe the outcome wasn't quite right, but they had a go. So saying things like, I saw how much effort you put into leading that session, you're really improving each time

It's preferable to just critiquing how they did. maybe saying something like that seemed to be outside your comfort zone. I'm really impressed that you gave it a go and lent in on that. And also, what did you learn from this and what's the next step for you?

So this builds their self-trust and they're more likely to say yes to the next stretch too.

So challenge isn't just for your team, it's also for you. It applies to you as a leader. So ask yourself, where am I playing it safe? what feedback have I been avoiding and what would feel like a stretch for me this quarter? Modelling this for your team creates a culture where growth is normal, not just reserved for development plans or performance improvement plans.

So to wrap up then, challenges about helping people grow at the right pace with the right support. it's one of the most powerful engagement tools you have when it's used intentionally. So remember, comfort feels safe, but it won't drive performance.

Panic is where mistakes, stress, and burnout happen. Stretch is where learning lives. So tailor the challenge to the individual and the circumstances. I really encourage you to praise the effort, not just the end result, and provide safety so people feel confident enough to give it a go. If your team hasn't been stretched lately, or they've been struggling under too much pressure, now's the time to recalibrate.

That's all for today's episode of How to Lead. Until next time, keep leading with Clarity, care, and curiosity. don't forget this is part of a miniseries of podcasts. Part three coming next week is all about control. If you've enjoyed this episode, do follow for more leadership insights.

And if you'd like my personal support, take a look at my website, waterfall hill.co uk. For more information about my one-to-one coaching and group coaching program, the Leadership Accelerator Premium.

There's never been a better time to take your professional development seriously than right now. I'd be delighted if you could like leave a review and share with your fellow leaders to help spread the word about the How to Lead podcast. The best leaders are clear on their vision, care about their people, and approach interactions with curiosity, not judgment.

Thanks very much for listening.