We need as many dynamic, healthy spiritual communities as we can get. These communities cannot thrive or sustain their impact unless they are guided by high-performing leaders who understand how to overcome personal and organizational limitations.
Having spent years coaching high performers and a decade training coaches globally, I am frequently asked how top-tier leaders inadvertently hinder their own progress. Answering this requires a deep dive into leadership growth under growing complexity.
The 1991 film The Pistol, based on the life of basketball legend “Pistol” Pete Maravich, illustrates this perfectly. In one scene, his father and coach, Press Maravich, tells his team that the game is more than just a sport—it is a way of life requiring discipline and self-challenge. This philosophy is essential for overcoming self-imposed limitations in leadership and reaching one’s full potential.
Then he pauses. “The problem with you boys is simple. You’re all a bunch of dummies ’cause you think you know it all.”
This might sound harsh, but it is the biggest challenge all high performers face. In the film, Coach Maravich proceeds to grab a ball and draws a small circle on it. “You see this circle? The size of this circle represents everything that I know about basketball.” Then he holds the ball out and says, “But the size of this ball represents everything about the game that has never been discovered.” Then he puts a tiny dot on the ball, and says, “This dot is what you all know, combined.”
Looking Forward Not Back
I think about that scene every day. It represents the same philosophy Jeff Bezos calls “Day 1” in his book Invent and Wander. He constantly reminds his team to act as if they’re starting over and to be inspired by all the potential success in front of them. It’s part of what Jesus meant when he invited Nicodemus to be “born again.” And when he taught that “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Spiritual leaders become Pharisees when they rely more on their current abilities than on their future capacity for spiritual and personal growth. Spiritual communities simply cannot achieve their full redemptive potential unless they’re led by people who are excited by the untapped gifts, dreams, skills and impact inside themselves and those they lead.
Every time we hire anyone at Novus Global or The Meta Performance Institute, we draw the same circle Press drew for those high school boys. When I hired my chief of staff, I drew a big circle and said, “This circle represents everything there is to know about being a world-class chief of staff.” Then I drew a much smaller circle, “This is how much you know.” And then I drew a dot: “That’s how much I know.” There are two important points here: She knows more than I do (that’s partly why we were hiring her), but neither of us know what’s possible for her in her role. She wasn’t hired for her small circle of what she knows. She was hired to explore how big she can get her circle to be.
A Meta Performer
This is the difference between a high performer and what we call a meta performer: High performance is about being good at something. Meta performance is about exploring what you’re capable of through the power of the Spirit and the call of God.
But telling the difference between the two can be tricky because they often look the same. Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck argued in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success that a person’s mindset was the definitive factor in one’s success. She broke down the types of mindsets into two categories: fixed or growth. People with fixed mindsets believe their abilities and skills are “fixed,” and those who adopt a growth mindset believe that their abilities can be developed.
However, after the broad acceptance of her ideas and book, she realized a phenomenon had taken place—which she called the “false growth mindset.” As with faux leather, which looks like real leather but it’s not, a false growth mindset it looks like you have a growth mindset, but you don’t.
FALSE GROWTH MINDSET
- Focused on past growth.
- Based on feelings: “I feel like I’m growing.”
- Haphazard about growth. Has no plan.
- Gets defensive when invited to grow.
- Looking for ways they’re already grown.
- I’ve reached the summit.
META PERFORMANCE MINDSET
- Focused on present and future growth.
- Based on results. “Proof of growing.”
- Has a plan for growth.
- Gets excited when invited to grow.
- Looking for new ways to grow.
- There is no summit.
The primary hallmark of a false growth mindset is if you ask someone, “How do you know you’ve grown?” they will almost always all look to the past: “I’ve grown so much. My team has grown. My church has grown.” But true growth doesn’t use the past to measure it. No, a growth mindset looks to the future. “Where do you want to grow? Where are you currently attempting to grow?” Don’t let past growth seduce you into ignoring your future potential.
In our firm, to protect against a false growth mindset, everyone in our company is on a performance improvement plan from the day they’re hired to the day they leave. This isn’t because people are in trouble. It’s because everyone is capable of (and expected to) grow. We have veteran coaches, and we have new coaches. Everyone in the firm is always getting coached by somebody, including me. We mix everybody up so that at any moment one of our most veteran coaches might be getting coached by one of our newest coaches. This approach challenges the false notion that new people have nothing to offer veterans or experienced coaches.
In The Pistol, Press Maravich finishes his pep talk by saying, “I don’t care if you’re short, slow, tall or small. You can play with the best of them if you’ll dedicate yourself to becoming better.”
This echoes the thoughts of the apostle Paul when he wrote that “God is able to do more than we could ever imagine.” Jesus said, “I came that you may have life, a better life than you ever dreamed of.” These are declarations of potential, and it’s when leaders partner with each other to explore what they’re capable of, with God’s help, they get out of their own way, they face their greatest challenges, and become the kinds of leaders that the world so desperately needs.