Today we have a guest post from our friend and customer, Kathy Bourque, owner of Rock Your Culture. Rock Your Culture was started to help small business owners manage their team and create an effective business culture. Kathy's blog and e-learning courses help you inspire your team to be as passionate as you are, while also keeping everyone on the same page.

Read more about Kathy's view on personal growth as part of creating an effective workplace culture below.

Does Growth = Happiness?

Do a quick search on Google and you will turn up 146,000,000 results in .26 seconds!

I, personally am a personal growth junkie.

I love it. I continually push myself out of my comfort zone.

I feel that everyone should.

But do you? If so, WHY?

Why do we push ourselves? Why do we challenge what we can already do? WHY, WHY, Why?

Here are some of the things I came up with in my research from Tony Robbins…”Growth = Happiness”:

• Personal growth can give us feelings of being alive. It can energize us. By doing more than we have ever done before, we feel empowered.
• Feeling empowered is a quick way to get to your own power.
• On our paths to self-discovery, we are searching for the true us. Searching for our purpose.
• This journey of searching should be our true happiness. If it isn’t, then why are we doing it?
• To reach a goal? To be better? To stop struggling?

I think the answer is yes, yes, YES!

By continually stepping outside our boxes, out of our comfort zones, out of our way, we may find new paths to happiness just from the mere act of growing.

So for me, Tony is right…

Growth does indeed equal happiness. For me this is true, but what about you?

So what does personal growth have to do with your business culture?

"The ability to take reasonable risks is an absolute requirement for any leader." - Joanna Barsh

You see, in order to have a rocking culture, you have to be a good leader.

• A leader that walks the walk.
• A leader that realizes that they don’t know everything.
• A leader who is open minded.

In order to be a good leader, you have to be willing to roll with the punches.

You have to want to roll up your sleeves and work.

Hard.

All the great CEOs know when this time comes. As Howard Schultz said in Onward: How Starbucks Fought For Its Life Without Losing Its Soul,

“The time had come for all of us to get in the mud and get our hands very, very dirty.”

You have to be willing to be constantly learning.

Growing.

How are ways that you have grown lately? What new things have you done to step outside of your box?

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Interested in learning more from Kathy? Follow her blog here.