If you want to grow your business, you must first increase your tolerance for being bad at something.
There are moments in every leader’s life when you feel utterly stupid. You try something new—maybe it’s a tool, a strategy, or a conversation—and you aren’t good at it. In fact, you might feel incompetent or even incapable.
But here’s the secret: that uncomfortable feeling is the gateway to real growth. Many leaders are familiar with the Situational Leadership framework by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, which describes four stages of learning. You begin in unconscious incompetence—you don’t see how imperfect you are. Then, painfully, you move into conscious incompetence—you recognize your flaws. This stage is often where most people give up. It stings. It bruises the ego. It exposes you.
If you stick with it, you eventually reach conscious competence—you can perform the task with deliberate focus. And one day, if you keep going, you arrive at unconscious competence—the level where skill becomes instinct. Think of the chefs at Benihana flipping shrimp, spinning eggs, and lighting onion volcanoes. They make it look effortless now, but early on, eggs were cracking, shrimp bounced off walls (and customer faces), and there were plenty of burnt fingers. No one escapes the awkward beginning.
The same holds true for you—whether you’re leading a company, developing a product, selling a service, or evolving into a newer version of yourself. Growth requires pushing through that tough middle phase where you’re painfully aware of how much further you have to go. That’s when most people give up.
And that’s why many leaders plateau.
The Painful but Necessary Part
“Conscious incompetence” is the part no one wants to talk about. It’s the stage where your confidence sinks to its lowest point, where you feel like you’re letting others down or exposing your weaknesses, and the voice inside your head whispers, Maybe you’re not cut out for this.
That voice is deceptive.
I’ve seen this happen in my own family. My son, like many kids, disliked not knowing something. He worked hard to get good quickly—not because he loved learning, but because he hated being bad. But the harsh truth is clear: the only way to become great is to go through being terrible first.
You have to embrace the suck. Not just as a slogan, but as a practice. Being bad at something means you’re growing. It means you’re creating new neural pathways, gaining new perspectives, and developing new skills. It means you’re evolving.
If you’re a leader today, it might look like:
- Struggling through a spreadsheet instead of avoiding it.
- Playing with AI tools even though they make you feel slow or out of your depth.
- Learning sales techniques that don’t come naturally.
- Asking better questions instead of pretending you already know the answer.
Every one of these starts with that uncomfortable, vulnerable feeling of inadequacy. That’s the cost of growth.
Comfort Is the Enemy of Growth
I’ve noticed a troubling pattern over the years: many smart, capable people never reach their full potential because they are afraid to look bad. They stay within their comfort zone, avoid new challenges, and cling to what they already do well. But comfort isn’t neutral—it’s a trap. As I often tell leaders: the comfort zone is the death zone.
It’s where growth ends. Ideas halt. Opportunities slip away. And your business ultimately mirrors the stagnation of its leader.
Yes, Even CEOs Get Stuck
Don’t assume seniority protects you from this. I’ve talked to CEOs who dismiss it and say, “I’m 50—I’m not learning that new stuff.”
That mindset not only hinders individuals but also damages their companies. When leaders resist learning, organizations become inflexible. Curiosity declines. Innovation slows. The culture mirrors the leader’s fear of discomfort.
But the opposite is also true: when leaders are visibly learning—awkwardly, imperfectly, sometimes embarrassingly—it inspires others to grow. It demonstrates that development isn’t about age, rank, or a stage. It’s about how we operate.
The Hard Truth—and the Good News
If you want to be great, you need to get comfortable feeling stupid. It’s not a mistake; it’s the starting point.
Every new skill, strategic pivot, or reinvention starts with you admitting, I’m not good at this yet. The “yet” is crucial as it shows knowledge that you will be good one day – with enough cycles.
Growth requires humility. It demands grit and a willingness to try, fail, look foolish, and try again. But if you can develop that resilience—if you can normalize that discomfort within yourself and your organization—you create a culture where capability grows, not shrinks. That’s what distinguishes leaders who stagnate from those who accelerate.
You need to be bad before you can be great.
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