🔥 5 Minutes of Leadership Fuel
✉️ This post is part of The 5-Minute Mentor — my weekly leadership newsletter. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, click here to subscribe.
Welcome to The 5-Minute Mentor — your weekly dose of leadership inspiration, curated resources, and practical action. All in under 5 minutes.
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🫶 A Dose of Inspiration
Ambition is the outcome you want to attain. Aspiration is the person you hope to become.
— Adam Grant
Ambitions have summits. We can see them, chase them, and eventually reach them… and that’s worth celebrating.
But aspiration works differently. The person we hope to become is always a little further ahead, and that isn’t a sign we’re falling short. It’s a sign we’re still growing.
Maybe the better question isn’t “Have I arrived?” but “Who am I becoming?”
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🤓 A Dose of Learning
It’s taken me a while to have enough perspective to see one of the most common myths of leadership. I’ve lived it myself, and I hear it often from leaders who trust me enough to share what they’re really feeling…
We listen to other leaders who sound more confident than we feel, and we start to believe they’ve arrived somewhere on the leadership journey that we haven’t… and maybe never will.
The reality? Sometimes a loud, confident voice is masking a less mature understanding of what leadership asks of us. And humility can be one of the clearest signs of maturity and readiness for the next step.
There are lots of ways this plays out in life, but one image from a recent episode of At the Table with Patrick Lencioni and Cody Thompson struck me as especially fitting… the false summit.
When Cody was a kid, he and his brother spotted a mountain right next to their parents’ house in Wyoming and decided they were going to hike it. Two hours later, they made it to the top… only to realize it wasn’t the top at all. Another peak was waiting beyond the bend.
That’s what growth feels like. The better we get, the more clearly we see how far there still is to go. Pat shared that he’s a better leader today than he was 20 years ago, and also more aware than ever of how much more he has to learn.
So if the summit keeps moving, how do we measure progress? Comparison only helps when the person we’re measuring against is who we were yesterday. Am I a little better tonight than I was when I woke up this morning? If the answer is yes, that’s worth celebrating. Better, not perfect.
It also helps to know that everyone’s goalposts are moving. Cody named a lie so many of us quietly believe… that we’re the only ones who feel like we’ll never arrive. We’re not. Every honest leader has felt it. And that’s the kind of humility that keeps us growing.
Which leaves us with a choice each time the clouds part and the next peak comes into view. We can decide we’re never climbing again, that others are far more prepared… or we can look up and say, “Oh, cool. There’s more to do. More journey to experience.” Pat describes the difference between those two responses as the difference between anxiety and peace. I say those two are the difference between settling and creating something remarkable.
I know which view I want.
🎧 Listen to “Closer but Further” on At the Table
🎬 A Dose of Action
For you
🤔 Think back to a “summit” you once believed would mean you’d arrived. What did you see when you got there?
🤔 Where are you measuring yourself against someone else’s confidence instead of your own growth?
For the ripple
🌀 Who’s earlier in their journey than you and could use the reminder that no one ever feels fully ready? Share a false summit from your own journey with them this week.
You got this. Let’s lead with belief.
In your corner,
Melody
Founder, Culture of Belief
P.S. When a second opinion is warranted… 💊😂
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