How much of growing nimble teams is about changing people?

It makes logical sense to many of us. If we want people to do better, we have to help them change. One small problem. People do not trust people they think have an agenda of changing them. People who are untrusted have no power to help people change. 

We see people grow all the time. In each case, it's when they have engaged their goodness in new ways. If someone has eight abilities and qualities that add to their goodness, there are over 40,000 different ways they can combine these for growth.

Growth is not a matter of "changing" people. It's a matter of giving them the freedom and support to keep creating new combinations for new levels of performance and possibility. 

The Change-growth Distinction

Change is often more an event. Growth is often more a process. Change is an intervention. Growth is an iteration.

With a single email or meeting we can change a team's leader, members, goals, standards, structures, resources, performance compensation, assignments and constraints. Change can be completely dictated and imposed. 

Growth comes from within. It is the iterative, incremental process of expanding clarity in three ways. It is a function of progress rather than pronouncement. 

Growth requires clarity about the good we what to see, clarity about the goodness we have and clarity in how to engage our goodness in realizing the good we seek. It is progress toward good through goodness. The more clarity we have, the more we grow in and through our work. 

Getting to new levels of team culture is a function of growth rather than change. Confusion about this leads to weakening culture. Team culture progresses when growth is at the center of the intention and process.