Comfort is the enemy of achievement.
Why do the best leaders find it necessary to eschew comfort to pursue progress? It’s for the same reason that the best teachers challenge themselves while seeking to disrupt student complacency.
You’ve probably heard the maxim that leaders need to “be comfortable with being uncomfortable.” Do you find that cliche as baffling as I do? How can you be both comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time? I’m not being nit-picky here. I’ve known leaders who interpreted the phrase as needing to feel comfortable with exercising their authority, which misses the point altogether.
The truth is that no one can thrive outside their comfort zone all the time, but great leaders are willing to operate outside their comfort zone much of the time. Why? Because they know they can’t grow if they never leave the coziness of the familiar. Have you ever heard the term “growing pains?” While it’s not true that physical growth typically causes literal pain, there is wisdom in the figurative use of the phrase.
For instance, we talk about the “pain” a person or organization experiences in taking on new responsibilities. Sometimes this pain manifests as obstacles or even setbacks. In such situations, we invoke the phrase “growing pains” to buck us up as we continue forward as in, “Don’t worry about that. It’s just growing pains.” It’s a variation on “this too shall pass” or “embrace the suck.”
That pain also represents the natural discomfort of encountering something novel or innovative. It’s the same with learning. Learning new things takes us out of our comfort zone and into the unfamiliar. As I’ve long preached, every true leader is a teacher (and vice versa), so considering the process of teaching and learning can be instructive to managers.
My experience as a college professor taught me the necessity of discomfort for both student learning and my own teaching. When I started, every class was a nerve-racking adventure. I felt overwhelmed and out of control. In time, I grew more familiar with the front of the classroom and soon enough complacency set in.
The irony is that with experience, my teaching actually got worse. When I looked back on it, I realized that as rough as my early days as a professor were, I at least had an edge then that seemed to cut through to students. My growing confidence dulled that edge into a blunt object, with which I then proceeded to bludgeon my poor students.
I don’t recall how, why, or even precisely when, but something jolted me out of my self-satisfaction. In part I simply grew bored and wanted to try something new. I started pushing myself to leave the well-traveled highway and take a chance on the backroads. As everyone knows, the backroads are where the world gets interesting.
My solution? I consciously reintroduced that edge to my classes. For instance, previously, I had stopped feeling any apprehension when I got up in front of the students; it was just normal and dull. Now I forced myself to feel a bit apprehensive at the beginning of class. Although that burst of anxiety dissipated minutes into the lesson, it was enough to get me going—like the spark from a spark plug that starts you on that backroad journey. I use the same technique in my public speaking.
I also pushed myself to develop courses outside the mainstream. I broke norms and even rules to ensure my students were getting what they actually needed, not what everyone just assumed. My content and approach grew more charged and stimulating. I unshackled my mind from convention and even plans. If something stopped working, I’d change it up midstream.
As a literature professor, I selected content for my courses that would expose students to new and sometimes unsettling ideas. I constantly challenged both their assumptions and mine. The ease and comfort of normality became enemies as I changed things up—sometimes radically if that served student learning best.
Students who were looking for the reliably familiar struggled as I prodded them to join me outside our collective comfort zone. A few students would resist throughout the semester, but most found pushing themselves to be a rewarding challenge. Some found it exhilarating and would take my courses every semester, never knowing what to expect. They could overlook the twinge of growing pains because they were eager to discover new perspectives.
All this discomfort smashed our complacency and enhanced our learning. After all, you can’t learn something new if you don’t encounter or do something new. Perhaps that last claim seems obvious, but most students and too many teachers refuse to accept it. They think learning should be regimented and incremental, a process of layering this bit of knowledge on another, of following a pattern, of clicking things in place, like building a Lego model. Brick laying does constitute learning of a sort, but in-depth learning takes place in leaps—epiphanies and breakthroughs—not incrementalism. And those leaps only happen when you leave the comfort of the familiar.
Eventually, I transitioned from faculty to academic administration, where I quickly recognized the parallels between classroom and leadership dynamics. The same principles applied. As a dean, I continued to challenge comfortable thought patterns and introduced new approaches, just as I had done with my students. The backroad explorations we made in the classroom proved equally valuable in blazing leadership trails.
We didn’t abandon the highway altogether, though. Well-established routes serve a critical function in terms of efficiency and certainty, but their usefulness can also be limiting. New routes can lead to new possibilities, and the best leadership—like the best teaching—is all about new possibilities.
One of the most reliable sources of new perspectives is the team members themselves. Wise managers build cultures of openness and respect and invite team members to offer diverse points of view. They also use delegation to develop team autonomy. Free of the strictures of the leader’s limitations, team members can bring in their own ideas and challenge conventional wisdom.
One of my millennial colleagues demonstrated this perfectly when I assigned her to design and oversee our teacher development trainings. Rather than guide the faculty through best practices as I expected, she had faculty present their own most effective teaching approaches. At first, I thought she might have strayed too far off the interstate, but I decided to trust her judgment. She brought an energy and enthusiasm that created a spirit of free exchange and opened the faculty to new ideas. Sure enough, despite her relatively young age, even veteran faculty soon joined her in discovering new inroads. Our students benefited immensely.
Of course, taking to the scenic byways does not guarantee a sunny sky or a pleasant trip. Shaking up complacency has its downside. For one thing, it’s by definition disruptive, so leaders need to balance innovation with stability; venturing off-road can mean a rough ride. Also, doing so involves the risk of failure—of crashing into a dead end—so leaders must calculate carefully.
Most concerningly, it can be plain exhausting for everyone. This exhaustion exceeds the passing unease of growing pains and warrants careful consideration. While comfort zones hold us back, they also offer safe harbor and respite. Comfort rejuvenates. The danger is that the comfort zone will become too alluring. It’s like sleep. You need enough to refresh and reenergize to get through your day, but too much is itself enervating.
The other downside is specific to the leader, particularly the middle manager, which I was. My approach often displeased my bosses. These executives had grown content with their own contentment, aggressively maintaining the status quo and contributing to the stagnation of their universities. They interpreted my approach as a willful challenge to their inadequacy.
I learned that just as you can’t learn without encountering, experiencing, or trying something new, you can’t move forward if you’re unwilling to move at all. As with teaching, to be an effective leader, you need to change things up, flip things upside down, and maybe stand on your head once in a while. Look at the underside of things and maybe consider the view from your side view mirror.
As with my students, your team members might chafe at the growing pains, but they’ll soon pass. Then you’ll want to consider changing the perspective again. I’m not suggesting that you keep you and your people in a constant state of instability, far from it. Comfort has its value; sometimes it’s best to cruise the highways for extended periods. The key is to create a culture that is open to trying something new, to breaking new ground, or to looking at things from a different angle when necessary.
Great leaders, like great teachers, are willing to face the challenge of leaving their comfort zone to spark progress. They grow wary of the comfort zone, for it inevitably will become a danger zone. If you’re a leader or aspire to be one, how comfortable are you with discomfort? The correct answer is “not at all, but let’s go for a ride.”
How willing are you to embrace discomfort? What can you do to create a culture that is open to the new?
Great leaders never grow comfortable with discomfort even as they learn to pursue it, and I can help.
Unlock the Great Leader Within! Download my free resource, the Transform To GREATness Toolkit, now!
I look forward to hearing from you.
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About Dr. Sal
I founded Guidance for Greatness to mentor rising professionals after serving 30 years in higher education as an English professor, dean, and VP.
In my speaking, writing, and coaching, I blend academic credentials (Ph.D. from Toronto, certificates from Harvard and ACE) with practical coaching certifications (Tiny Habits, Thrive Global) to offer something different: leadership development built upon human decency.
My mission? To guide today’s managers to become the next generation of great leaders.
I offer practical, values-driven strategies so that managers can lead authentically.
Why? Because great leaders aren't just effective managers—they're teachers whose example makes a true difference in the world.
It’s almost here!
Discover the practical strategies that transform good managers into exceptional leaders. Look for my new book, Greater than Great: How to Excel in Leadership through Learning, Logic, and Life to Make a True Difference in the World, in early 2025!
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