“The comfort zone is where dreams go to die” – Henry Cavill
Earlier this year, we helped a client drawdown greater value within their existing project contract framework at the same time as helping them recruit a new project manager. This led to us stepping back our involvement in the project, which helped us get super-specific about the ‘Transition’ phase of our Ascent service. Yes, we offer bespoke project management support. Yet our support is designed to help you, as an engineering company or technical service provider, to improve your approach to project delivery. We help plan how best to empower your team to hire and retain the best resources for your organisation using a great project management system, often without the need for Coron to be involved on a weekly basis. In fact, from the day we contract with you, Coron can be working to make ourselves redundant and leave you in the best position for your next successful project if that is what you want.
That might be out of the comfort zone for some project management consultancies or professional service providers: leaving a project once in good shape in favour of unchartered territory. Yet, as the quote suggests, a comfort zone can limit us. At Coron, we strive to work with a diverse range of organisations, even though our journey began with mid-size engineering companies. Our creativity thrives on moving on to new projects from time to time, stretching our thinking with new challenges.
We’ve found, as professional project managers, that creative thinking helps us figure out how to solve issues, how to be innovative when managing resource plans and when to be leading the way with open communication. But if you’ve got stuck in your comfort zone, those things are much harder to introduce or maintain. So, what creates comfort zones?
What determines a person’s comfort zone?
Comfort zones are wildly different for each person. What feels safe for one might feel like a huge stretch for another. Staying in the same career or job as a project manager would still offer opportunities to stretch your comfort zone if you’re learning new things. The way you respond to work or life challenges might be within your comfort zone, if you repeat patterns of behaviour or similar emotions bubble up often for you when dealing with relationships at work – or at home. Keeping your oldest friendships alive can really push you out of your comfort zone if your normal approach is to walk away and move onto new light-hearted friendships every time you feel frustrated with a person you’ve had in your life.
There are nine factors which determine a person’s individual comfort zones, and these are a mix of internal and external influences:
- Relationships – how you relate to other people, who is in your family now, who you were surrounded by while growing up and how you handle the emotional links.
- Beliefs – what you believe about yourself and the world, what religions you’ve heard about, and how you’ve trained your brain to think about and respond to new experiences.
- Past experiences – what’s happened to you in life, in relationships, in school and in work, some of which were events outside your control.
- Habits – how you spend your time each day, what feels like a good outcome, things you repeatedly do and achieve.
- Culture – what kind of society you are mixing in, how often you travel to new places or hear about different ways of life, what books or TV shows you like or cultural interests you have.
- Work environment – where you are based, what tasks you do and the purpose underpinning the work you do.
- Personality – whether you’re extroverted or prefer your own company; whether you’re happy taking the lead or following instructions; how much empathy and compassion you feel
- Appetite for learning – how open you are to new knowledge, how much curiosity you feel about different subjects, and the amount of motivation you have to expand your skills or gain new perspectives.
- Affinity for risk – your comfort with uncertainty, willingness to take chances, and how you handle unpredictable situations or outcomes.
There are so many different personality assessment tools which can help identify what is typical for a ‘type’ of personality. Yet we need to remember that all of us are only human, and our responses are unpredictable when under pressure. We may feel our comfort zone is flexible and believe we’re willing to move beyond it. Then when a crisis occurs or we reach a point of overwhelm because of gradual overload, our comfort zone shrinks right back down.
How do you stretch your project manager’s comfort zones?
If you’ve noted that one of your team might be stuck in their comfort zone, what can you do about it? If your team are already stretched in busy project management jobs, they’ll need a balance of support, encouragement, and thoughtful challenges that gently push them beyond their usual boundaries. Here are some effective ways to encourage your team to stretch beyond their comfort zones:
- Ask them to think of, or set them small, achievable challenges – manageable tasks that are slightly beyond their usual project responsibilities can help them overcome any resistance to change. Success with these helps build confidence for tackling larger ones and gets people back into the habit of taking action.
- Encourage them to talk more – open communication is essential for successful projects, so you need a culture where team members feel safe expressing their concerns, doubts, or even fears about new challenges. Knowing they can speak openly makes them more likely to take risks and gentle humour can ease those conversations.
- Celebrate effort, not just success – recognise the courage it takes to step outside the comfort zone, regardless of the outcome. Celebrating people that are trying to make changes encourages team members to keep pushing themselves.
- Provide training or develop resources together for your project team – equip them with the skills and tools they need for unfamiliar tasks. Feeling prepared can make stepping into new territory feel less daunting.
- Assign or encourage cross-functional tasks – encourage team members to work beyond their core expertise, collaborating with colleagues from other departments. This exposure to new perspectives broadens their experience and confidence.
- Give your project team room to develop peer support systems – this means ensuring they’re not overwhelmed with too much work and pairing team members in mentoring or buddy systems, to offer each other encouragement and accountability as they take on new challenges. Some people might want a more senior mentor, maybe even their boss. Others might benefit from greater diversity in their relationships at a similar level but with different technical expertise.
- Model a growth mindset – show your team that you, too, are stretching and learning, unafraid to experiment and fail sometimes too. When leaders step out of their comfort zones in their actions and conversations, it inspires others to follow.
When team members expand their comfort zones, they grow in resilience, adaptability, and confidence, all of which can lead to greater project success and career satisfaction. However, some obvious problems arise if we don’t shift outside our comfort zones.
What happens if we don’t move outside of our comfort zone?
Staying inside our comfort zone may feel like the safest option. But, if you or your team resist moving outside your comfort zones, it could potentially lead to missing valuable experiences:
- Missed opportunities for growth – by staying within their comfort zones, individuals may hold back from suggesting their good ideas or miss out on learning new skills or expanding their knowledge. This can limit personal and professional growth, making it harder to reach their full potential. If they blame work as the cause of their dissatisfaction, they may leave their project job, looking for career progression elsewhere. This leaves you with a gap in the team and not enough resource.
- Lack of creative thinking to solve problems – staying in familiar situations limits exposure to new perspectives, which can hamper creative thinking and problem-solving skills. Those who avoid challenges miss the chance to develop resilience and adaptability, both key qualities in handling complex project issues.
- Loss of confidence over time – ironically, consistently avoiding challenges can weaken self-confidence. If individuals never take on tasks outside their comfort zone, they might start doubting their ability to handle anything new or uncertain, making future growth even harder.
- Risk of falling behind in skills and innovation – in today’s rapidly changing world, project management skills can quickly become outdated. If people aren’t open to new learning experiences, they may find themselves less competitive or unable to adapt to changes in their field or industry.
- Lack of fulfilment – growth and personal achievement often bring a deep sense of satisfaction. By staying in a comfort zone, individuals may miss the pride and fulfilment that comes from overcoming challenges and realizing their potential.
So how does moving beyond our comfort zone bring project success?
When we are encouraged to push our boundaries, we open up to a world of opportunity, experience, and growth that wouldn’t be possible within the confines of a comfort zone. The benefits of pushing your limits include growth in confidence and resilience, adaptability and creative problem solving to fuel better outcomes on site, and personal satisfaction as you are learning and developing new skills or staying fulfilled in the work you do. As we recognise at Coron, everyone wins when there is a greater purpose and good intentions behind the strategy of delivering on time and within budget to meet clients’ needs.
When the time is right, we do move on from projects, that is, once you’ve got the right people in your team and a great system in place using our tools. However, if you want us to stay close and be ready to get involved in the future, we have another service that can help you called Base Camp. This is where we can mentor your team or consult with your project manager on new challenges that arise, like we did with our client this year. With all our clients, we are happy to hear your feedback and to stay in touch.
