{"id":82889,"date":"2022-11-05T09:43:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-05T13:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=82889"},"modified":"2022-11-16T15:17:44","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T19:17:44","slug":"personal-growth-in-the-workplace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Personal Growth in the Workplace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Why is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/how-to-grow-as-a-person\/\">personal growth<\/a> important in the workplace? How can leaders encourage personal growth among employees? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many companies don\u2019t encourage personal growth because they can\u2019t easily measure its effectiveness. Instead, those companies expect employees to focus on their day-to-day tasks and to do them \u201cby the book,\u201d with no room for personal growth. In doing so, they stifle people\u2019s potential and enthusiasm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With this in mind, here&#8217;s how you can inspire a commitment to personal growth among your employees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-personal-growth-in-the-workplace\"><strong>Personal Growth in the Workplace<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>When every part of your company\u2014in other words, each person within it\u2014is committed to constant personal growth, the organization as a whole will naturally grow and improve.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: A survey from the Society for Human Resource Management confirms what Senge says here. The survey found that the single biggest contributing factor to job satisfaction is <a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2014\/11\/an-easy-way-to-make-your-employees-happier\">the chance to use skills and abilities<\/a>\u2014in other words, the chance to face challenges and improve by doing so. This trend held true regardless of the responders\u2019 ages, genders, or tenures.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Peter Senge, the author of <em>The Fifth Discipline<\/em>, to encourage personal growth in the workplace, you need to build the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/building-a-positive-workplace-culture\/\">company culture<\/a> around it from the ground up. In short, every member of your company, as well as the company\u2019s policies, must support honesty, creativity, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/challenging-the-status-quo\/\">challenging the status quo<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, if you\u2019re not in a position to do that, you can also try to start it as a grassroots movement within the organization: Practice personal growth yourself, regardless of whether or not the higher-ups encourage it, and try to get your coworkers to do the same. Hopefully, your supervisor will take note of your department\u2019s improved performance and ask how you accomplished it. That will begin an organizational change from the bottom up, rather than from the top down.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Personal Growth for Its Own Sake<\/strong><br><br>As a partial counterpoint to Senge, entrepreneur <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/who-is-ray-dalio\/\">Ray Dalio<\/a> writes in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/app\/book\/principles-life-and-work\"><em>Principles: Life and Work<\/em><\/a><em> <\/em>that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/app\/book\/principles-life-and-work\/part-2#hurdle-1-your-ego\">self-improvement is its own reward.<\/a> In other words, if you see personal growth as just a means to an end\u2014such as earning more money or being more respected\u2014you\u2019ll soon become frustrated with it. This is because personal growth is a difficult process, and the satisfaction you get from material gains drops off quickly once your basic needs are fulfilled.&nbsp;<br><br><strong>Therefore, Dalio believes that you should pursue personal growth and improvement as an end in itself. <\/strong>He believes that the satisfaction you get from improving your own skills and knowledge is far greater than the satisfaction you\u2019d get from ever-increasing wealth. In other words, from Dalio\u2019s perspective, the growth itself is the goal\u2014Senge\u2019s promises of improved job performance on a personal level and a more successful company on the organizational level are just side effects.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why is personal growth important in the workplace? How can leaders encourage personal growth among employees? Many companies don\u2019t encourage personal growth because they can\u2019t easily measure its effectiveness. Instead, those companies expect employees to focus on their day-to-day tasks and to do them \u201cby the book,\u201d with no room for personal growth. In doing so, they stifle people\u2019s potential and enthusiasm. With this in mind, here&#8217;s how you can inspire a commitment to personal growth among your employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":69953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,30],"tags":[778],"class_list":["post-82889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-management","category-work","tag-the-fifth-discipline","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Importance of Personal Growth in the Workplace - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Why is personal growth important in the workplace? When employees are committed to personal growth, the organization grows as a whole.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Importance of Personal Growth in the Workplace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Why is personal growth important in the workplace? When employees are committed to personal growth, the organization grows as a whole.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-11-05T13:43:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-11-16T19:17:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/professional-women-work-meeting.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Darya Sinusoid\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0421cce75bc249b11e2517b3a91f9c46\"},\"headline\":\"The Importance of Personal Growth in the Workplace\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-11-05T13:43:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-11-16T19:17:44+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/\"},\"wordCount\":488,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/professional-women-work-meeting.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Fifth Discipline\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Management\",\"Work\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/\",\"name\":\"The Importance of Personal Growth in the Workplace - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-growth-in-the-workplace\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/professional-women-work-meeting.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-11-05T13:43:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-11-16T19:17:44+00:00\",\"description\":\"Why is personal growth important in the workplace? 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