Here’s what I learned about leadership growth from the two-day “Growth Catalyst” retreat I ran for 6 founders/CEOs…
They run businesses ranging from pre-revenue well-funded startups to $100M category leaders.
The goal? Break out of incremental progress and find overlooked opportunities for breakthrough growth in 2025.
On day one, I pushed their thinking on direction and strategy. And on day two, we looked at the barriers to growth. What was holding the business back?
When we drilled into the root cause of slow growth, we very quickly found ourselves looking at the exec leadership team. We found, for example:
- Complacency, lack of stretch
- Overly inwardly focused
- Complexity, slow progress
- Misalignment, slow decision-making
And… when we went a level deeper, we discovered there was a specific personal leadership challenge for each of these founder/CEOs:
- Being a ‘soft touch’ – tolerating mediocrity – avoiding conflict
- Distracted by day-to-day problems, tunnel vision
- Self-doubt, letting others lead, not clear enough
- Too internal, not engaging key customers
- Etc.
It became crystal clear: PERSONAL transformation leads to TEAM transformation leads to BUSINESS transformation and growth.
