Mastery Is Where Leaders Start Getting Worse

Javier Rodríguez has spent almost his entire career with one employer. That alone makes him unusual today. What makes him more unusual is how he has spent it: moving through eight or nine different roles, and now leading Popular's insurance sales business as president of Popular Risk Services.

At our Human Capital Reinvention forum in Puerto Rico, I asked what kept him growing inside one organization for so long. His answer surprised the room. He keeps seeking discomfort, he said, because once he masters something, he starts to get worse at it.

Why mastery can make you worse

It sounds like a contradiction. Isn't mastery the goal?

Javier's point is subtle and important. When you master a role, you stop paying the same attention. You rely on what worked before. You see patterns you expect instead of what is actually in front of you. Your confidence rises while your curiosity falls. Over time, the expert becomes the person least likely to notice that the job has changed.

His way of fighting it is deliberate. He puts himself in uncomfortable situations to force himself to change, takes on new projects and tries to bring the organization along with him. When I asked why vulnerability matters, he said it lowers a leader's ego and lets employees actually connect with you instead of seeing a distant figure.

Many leaders I work with feel this without naming it. They are good at their jobs and quietly bored by them. Their performance hasn't dropped yet, but their growth has stopped. That is often the moment just before an organization starts to lose them, or worse, keeps them in a role they have stopped improving.

What he looked for beyond the paycheck

When Javier described what drove him through all those roles, compensation was only part of it. What mattered was impact, ownership and room to build something.

That is what he tries to give his own people. As he put it in our forum report, "Beyond compensation, employees seek belonging, inclusion, and energy in their work."

Energy is the word that stays with me. People bring energy to work they feel they own. They lose it in roles that have been reduced to routine. A leader who understands that will keep moving people into new challenges before they go stale, rather than waiting for them to ask, or to leave.

Breaking the hierarchy that silences the front line

Javier also talked about something he wants to change: the hierarchy that keeps frontline employees from talking with senior leaders.

In many organizations, the people closest to customers know the most about what is working and what isn't. Yet their insight travels through layer after layer before it reaches anyone who can act on it, if it arrives at all. By the time it does, it has been softened, summarized and stripped of urgency.

Leaders who want energy in their organizations have to shorten that distance. The front line should feel that senior leaders want to hear from them directly, not only through reports.

I hear a version of this constantly. Someone is told they can't be promoted because they are doing such a good job where they are. They walk away feeling flattered. They shouldn't. That praise is often about how well they meet someone else's objectives, not about their own growth. When I was about Javier's age, I turned down a job that would have doubled my salary, because I could see it would take me somewhere I didn't want to go. Growth has to be measured by where you are headed, not only by what you are paid.

Javier also seeks out mentors inside and outside his industry. For him, it has nothing to do with age. It has to do with experience and perspective, people who know why things were done a certain way and can help him see how they might change.

How to keep growing when you're already good

• Name the part of your job you could do in your sleep. Ask what you might be missing there.
• Take on one responsibility this quarter that makes you a beginner again.
• Look at your strongest people. Who has mastered their role and needs a new challenge before they lose interest?
• Spend an hour with frontline employees with no agenda except to listen.

Reinvention without leaving

We often talk about reinvention as something that happens when people change companies or careers. Javier's story shows another path. You can reinvent yourself many times inside one organization, as long as you keep choosing discomfort over comfort and the organization keeps making room for you to grow.

That second condition matters. Organizations that want to keep their best people must design careers that allow for reinvention, not just promotion. Lateral moves, new responsibilities and stretch assignments are not distractions from performance. They are how performance stays alive.

You can watch Javier's conversation in Leadership and Generational Change in Puerto Rico, part of the Human Capital Reinvention season.

The best leaders aren't the ones who have mastered everything. They are the ones who keep finding something new to master.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.