An Interview With Maria Angelova
Never overlook physical disruption. Altering your physical state or position can really open your mind to change.
It feels most comfortable to stick with what we are familiar with. But anyone who has achieved great success will tell you that true growth comes from pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. What are some ways that influential people have pushed themselves out of their comfort zone to grow both personally and professionally? As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jim Salvucci.
Jim Salvucci, Ph.D., is the founder and president of Guidance for Greatness, a leadership coaching and consulting firm that helps leaders and aspiring leaders master the skills of change and learn to cultivate the best in themselves and in others by refocusing on their personal values and organizational mission. Previously Jim’s career in higher education spanned three decades at a variety of institutions as an English professor, a dean, and a provost, which inspired him to become a student and teacher of the core principles of leadership. He has received intensive and extensive training from the Institute for Management and Leadership at Harvard University and the Institute for Chief Academic Officers at the American Council on Education and is a certified Tiny Habits coach as well as a certified life coach.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
Thank you for the opportunity to speak about this important topic, which is really all about change. I grew up in a middle-class family in Delaware County, PA, just outside Philadelphia. My father was a blue-collar worker and later a union leader, and my mother had several jobs, including working for our local member of congress. Neither had any college, but they valued education, read a lot, and were deeply principled. My brother, my only sibling, became an engineer. My parents’ love of reading and learning had a massive influence over me, which was vital to my development and inspired me to pursue English as my field. They also lived their values even when doing so was challenging and uncomfortable, and that example has impacted my approach to all I do.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
The Dutch poet Piet Hein wrote, “Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back.”
Hein makes clear that the more interesting and significant a dilemma, the more difficult it is. Facile tests and minor challenges are pointless. Understanding this fact has helped make me bolder in facing challenges and embracing change. In fact, Hein reveals why operating in one’s comfort zone is fruitless and will hinder progress. It is the uncomfortable dilemma — the problem that hits back — that will best equip us to move forward by increasing our resilience and demonstrating our hidden strengths. Easy is dull and meaningless and advances nothing of much worth.
I have tried to approach problems, setbacks, and challenges as — if not welcomed — accepted parts of the landscape. Instead of despairing and retreating when a problem seems to get harder, I attack it with more gusto. I have another saying, attributable to no one: “Problems have solutions.” There are few things in life more satisfying than solving a particularly intractable problem, and there is always a solution.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
There are many I could list, so I will speak about one of the first books on leadership that blew me away. It may surprise. It is Robert Sutton’s The No Asshole Rule. Sutton is a Stanford business professor, and his book — despite what you may surmise from the title — is a thoughtful and well researched exploration of the consequences of toxic personalities in the workplace.
The principles behind the book seem so obvious — don’t be a jerk; don’t put up with jerks — yet they escape so many. This is true of most leadership principles. They are glaringly self-evident and yet have to be reinforced over and over.
I first read Sutton’s book when I became an academic dean at a university, and it clarified and crystallized what I already intuitively knew: that jerks, no matter their role, their accomplishments, or their credentials, cause intolerable damage in organizations.
In higher education academics there is a tendency to overlook toxic personalities in favor of other metrics such as publication records, teaching experience, and academic pedigree. The harm this predilection does to colleagues, students, and even institutions is considerable.
To counter this trend, I used The No Asshole Rule (and its superb follow up, Good Boss, Bad Boss) to train leaders and hiring committees about the type of applicants they should consider. We also used it to implement policies that served as a primer on how to behave and not behave as a colleague. As a result, we created a culture that, while still imperfect, proved to be welcoming and resilient, which left faculty with more bandwidth to devote to their primary job: teaching students. By engaging with an uncomfortable topic (and reading a book with a discomfiting title), we were able to develop as individuals and learn how to work best together.
When I moved on to other universities, the book and its wisdom came with me. I always had a stack of Sutton’s book in my office and would hand it out liberally, even to my bosses. Some of my bosses apparently never read it, though.
Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Let’s start with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. What does “getting outside of your comfort zone” mean?
One much overlooked definition of “getting outside of your comfort zone” is the literal: to make yourself physically uncomfortable. I don’t mean wearing a hairshirt to meetings unless that’s your thing, but simple approaches like sitting in a different place every time your team meets. By doing so you are upending people’s expectations of their physical environment. Believe it or not, minor physical discomfort is a powerful tool for opening the mind.
What most people usually mean, though, when they talk about getting outside their comfort zone is more about the mental state. It is disrupting the brain’s expectations and assumptions in order to make it more open and receptive to change. It is how we learn best. To do so, you must expose yourself to new ideas and perspectives, even ones that rub you the wrong way or run counter to your accepted truths.
Can you help articulate a few reasons why it is important to get out of your comfort zone?
Think of a luxurious and well-cushioned recliner. Imagine sitting in it, snuggling in there and sinking into its soft embrace. You just want to stay there forever, but you won’t. You can’t. Why? Because enjoying that chair is the opposite of going anywhere. We nuzzle into the chair to hide from the scary stuff out in the world, but our comfort zone does not eliminate or even slow the onslaught of our anxieties. You can only overcome fear by confronting it, not sitting in a comfy chair.
I am not suggesting that we don’t all need and deserve regular and even lengthy trips to our cushy chairs or comfort zones to relax, recharge, and just enjoy, but that is not the totality of life. Life — at least the most intriguing parts — happens outside our comfort zones.
Birth, movement, progress, and rebirth are all inherently uncomfortable. Proceeding, achieving, and advancing all have to do with moving into the new and unknown, into the universe beyond our comfort zone. Aspiration is great, but aspiration without challenge, risk, and movement is equivalent to daydreaming in your cushy chair. You cannot reach your greatest goals without leaving your comfort zone.
This all applies to learning, too. I was a professor and college administrator for three decades, and it is axiomatic among decent educators that no learning of any substance happens when students are too comfortable. As a friend of mine, a high school English teacher, puts it, “The learning comes with the struggle.”
Good teaching is disruptive. Good students take risks. Good education constantly moves students from their comfort zones to a place where their minds are more open and alert. The students who refuse to budge from their comfortable places render themselves unteachable. Perhaps that is one reason why we don’t furnish classrooms with La-Z-Boys.
So, if you want to overcome fear, grow, achieve, learn, or get anything done worth doing, you need to leave your comfort zone.
Is it possible to grow without leaving your comfort zone? Can you explain what you mean?
Of course you can grow within your comfort zone. You can make gains by following the same old same old, but don’t expect significantly different results. Your improvement will never be more than incremental. Real and substantial progress requires you to shake things up, try something new, and operate outside your comfort zone. Frankly, if you want to get anything of substance done, you had best learn to embrace the disruption.
I will offer a seemingly counter example, though, of how small changes can lead to massive growth. I am a certified Tiny Habits coach. Tiny Habits was written by Dr. B.J. Fogg, who leads Stanford’s Behavior Design Lab. One of the premises of Tiny Habits is that by developing very small behaviors, we can grow them into larger routines. For instance, by developing a habit of doing a couple of push-ups every time you brush your teeth, you can expand that into a habit of many more push-ups and even regular exercise. Such an experience can alter your whole mindset regarding change and self-improvement and, most importantly, you can develop your skills of change.
Can you share some anecdotes from your personal experience? Can you share a story about a time when you stepped out of your comfort zone and how it helped you grow? How does it feel to take those first difficult steps?
It is so difficult to choose because I regularly and consciously step outside my comfort zone. On a macro scale, I left a thirty-year career in higher education to start Guidance for Greatness, a firm that works with new and aspiring managers who don’t want to be that boss and who instead want to find success as great leaders. There are few things as uncomfortable as leaving an established career to be an entrepreneur, but I aspire to lead a movement to rid the world of bad bossing. If I allow myself to dwell on it, my leap into uncertainty is terrifying, but it has been worth it. I am happier and more fulfilled than ever, and I continue to grow in my understanding of how I can still shape who I am.
Here is a more localized example of operating outside my comfort zone. When I was an English professor, I regularly taught a course in satire. My definition of satire centers on its subversiveness, which is to say how satire seeks to move us away from the familiar, out of our comfort zone, without us noticing until it is too late. Inspired by “language immersion” pedagogy in which much of the instruction takes place in a second language, I created a concept called “satiric immersion.” I saturated the student experience with satire by designing a course where nearly every aspect, not just the works we studied, subverted their norms and assumptions. I wrote a satiric syllabus, created satiric assignments, and used satire as an instructional method. In other words, I forced the students to operate outside their comfort zones constantly.
On the first day of class, I would wear a ridiculous jacket I found at a thrift store. I called it my “lounge lizard jacket” because it looked like something a cheesy entertainer would wear. It was long and iridescent black with ostentatious brass buttons. Since it was entirely made of 1970s nylon, it was also incredibly hot. Therefore, I looked ridiculous and felt miserable. I would explain to the students that my mental and physical discomfort in that jacket was how we would all feel all semester. I would reference that horrible jacket as our symbol of operating outside our comfort zones.
My satire course was wildly popular with a certain type of student — the ones who wanted to learn, really learn, through being challenged. The others tended to drop the course the first week.
As for the course’s effect on me, I grew as a teacher. By operating way outside my comfort zone in the satire course, I became bolder in my other courses — more willing to take risks, more willing to fail and learn from my mistakes. This boldness permeates how I approach everything, and I realize our fear of missteps keeps us from moving at all. To this day, I remember the without-a-net feel of that course and how scary but freeing it was. There were days I was hesitant to walk into the classroom, and those were usually the days the class soared. I would not be who I am if I never taught that course that way.
Here is the central question of our discussion. What are your “five ways to push past your comfort zone, to grow both personally and professionally”?
Here are five ways to push past your comfort zone, some of which I have already described.
1. Physical disruption.
Never overlook physical disruption. Altering your physical state or position can really open your mind to change.
As I mentioned, I used to move my seat in weekly meetings to disrupt the flow of the room, even in meetings that I was leading. And I never led meetings from the head of the table, which itself was disruptive. Pushing the envelope on this approach, I also once disrupted a contract negotiation simply by sitting on the opposite side of the table from my colleagues. When the other party arrived, they were completely discombobulated by me being on the wrong side. Their evident shock and confusion were comical, and we instantly and effortlessly gained the upper hand. To top it off, I never voluntarily spoke, which really disturbed them. Because they were so uncomfortable, we could see their resolve begin to crack. Soon enough they started to question their assumptions and began to open to the changes we wanted. They ended up acceding to all our demands. I literally helped us take control of a tough negotiation without saying a word.
2. Learning.
Any learning of any value will necessitate pushing past your comfort zone.
As a professor I discovered early on that students did not learn as effectively if they were not a little on edge. Not only would I physically displace them by rearranging where they sat, but I also exposed them to new materials and ideas in ways that would inspire them to think and imagine and evaluate, the stuff of learning. A class with me would involve materials and approaches far beyond the course topic. In some courses their final assignment was a short paper explaining how the course affected their cultural assumptions or personal values. I wanted them to produce that final reflection to assure they would have something of value beyond just the course content to take with them.
3. Awe.
The experience of awe is an amazing and rewarding way to move beyond your comfort zone.
Awe often comes from novelty. So gravitating toward the unexpected can set us up to experience awe. Some people do this more readily than others, a personality trait that experts describe as being open to experience. Whether you are psychologically open or not, exposure to awe is available to everyone.
We experience awe when we see something that defies our expectations, which is a powerful way to disrupt our sense of comfort. Some more positive ways of experiencing awe are to spend time in nature, expose yourself to art, or to closely observe the forgotten intricacies of common objects. Some people find awe in contemplating the divine or the cosmos. You can also experience awe through your imagination. Awe doesn’t have to be huge or expansive. It could just be a hey-look-at-that moment.
We think of awe as something that just happens, but you can induce awe. For several years now I have been lucky enough to be able to view the magnificent Hudson River and the mountains behind it through my front windows. As spectacular as this scene is, though, it is easy to overlook as it grows more familiar. I have vowed to myself that I will not take this scene for granted, so I frequently just stare at it and contemplate its splendor. Doing so puts my mind in a state that is more open and creative, a state of awe. By refusing to grow comfortable with this beautiful view, I have altered something in myself that makes me more productive. Imagine that.
4. Running toward challenges.
Every time you leave your comfort zone you are facing some challenge and experiencing change. In turn, choosing to run toward challenges and embrace change will push you from your comfort zone. Sometimes doing so requires leaning into the counterintuitive.
When I was a university dean, I created and ran a series of forums that addressed a variety of interesting subjects. These forums featured panels of experts who offered different perspectives on the topics, and they proved to be popular until they weren’t. For whatever reason, in our fourth year, these twice-a-semester forums started drawing smaller and smaller audiences. When we held a forum that had fewer spectators than panelists, I slipped into despair. It was time to shut it all down it seemed. All good things must end, right? It was a shame because these forums were an invaluable contributor to student learning and had been engaging for faculty and staff as well.
Upon reflection, though, I realized that ending the series was the cowardly approach. I informally surveyed people to find out why they stopped attending and realized that the solution was just the opposite of what was most comfortable. Instead of cancelling the forums, I doubled their frequency while changing up the format. If someone else was passionate about a topic, I put them in charge and stepped back to watch them shine. I even turned some forums over to students while I sat in the audience.
This counterintuitive approach — offering more rather than just quitting — was scary at first and seemed a little nutty, but soon our forum series became more popular and more valuable than ever. By running at the challenge and moving outside my comfort zone, I found success in what — by every measure — had been a failure.
5. Constant improvement.
Perfectionism is your comfort zone on steroids. There is an arrogance in pretending that you and you alone can achieve perfection. Perfectionism is inherently dishonest. The pursuit of perfection inevitably leads to disappointment and failure even as it feels safe. Consequently, perfectionists are highly judgmental toward themselves and toward others. They slip into chronic discontent, micromanagement, and workaholism. As bosses, they are among the most toxic. I can keep going, but you get the idea.
A better approach is to forget perfection and strive for constant improvement, which is both achievable and more honest. You can always improve. The catch is that constant improvement requires constantly pushing past your comfort zone. Perhaps counterintuitively, it also means sometimes letting go and even quitting. As with all practices that operate outside your comfort zone, constant improvement leaves you more open to possibility.
Years ago, I was the president of my neighborhood association in Baltimore. In many ways, this volunteer position was harder than being a university dean. I did not choose to be president, but the previous president quit unexpectedly leaving me, as vice president, in charge. She said she was stepping down for personal reasons, but the truth was she had been miserable. She was a perfectionist and control freak, and few things are as imperfect and uncontrollable as a Baltimore neighborhood. She just could not stand to work outside the narrow and unreasonable expectations of her comfort zone.
I am, by choice, not a perfectionist, so as soon as I took over, I put us on a path to improvement, not perfection. To be most effective I had to operate way beyond my comfort zone, leading hearings in front of municipal boards, confronting errant business owners, and creating coalitions with leaders from other neighborhoods and city officials.
My higher purpose was to shift our mindset from collective disappointment and resignation to action and optimism, and it started working. There was a sense of hope growing. People who had been at each other’s throats started listening as I pushed them from their settled positions. We gained allies all over the area and within city agencies, including the police. We started planning. It could never be perfect, of course, but it was progress. Our finances even improved. I had moved our entire neighborhood from its comfort zone with great results.
From your experience or perspective, what are some of the common barriers that keep someone from pushing out of their comfort zone?
Eric Hoffer wrote that “People will cling to an unsatisfactory way of life rather than change in order to get something better for fear of getting something worse.” In other words, people simply want to maintain the comfortable status quo because it seems safer. There are elements of psychology at work here as well as evolutionary imperatives. There are also societal and cultural pressures. Humans collectively are change resistant and leaving your comfort zone is inherently a driver of change.
In short, then, we and we alone are the greatest barrier to leaving our comfort zones. We set arbitrary standards and build walls around ourselves and around our society. We even build walls around other people in order to keep them in line. Our change-resistance is fear, and fear is the enemy of progress.
There is a well-known quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt that says, “Do something that scares you every day”. What exactly does this mean to you? Is there inherent value in doing something that pushes you out of your comfort zone, even if it does not relate to personal or professional growth? For example, if one is uncomfortable about walking alone at night should they purposely push themselves to do it often for the sake of going beyond their comfort zone? Can you please explain what you mean?
The therapeutic technique called “exposure therapy” involves having people confront their fears. I am not a psychologist, but I understand that it involves exposing an individual to a source of anxiety while keeping them from any real danger. When Eleanor Roosevelt says, “Do something that scares you every day,” she is suggesting something very similar.
Some have said that once you do the thing you fear, it ceases to be source of fear, but I find that a bit overstated. The fact is that if we confront our unreasonable fears, they do tend to lessen but not necessarily go away altogether. Nonetheless, once again, moving outside your comfort zone results in progress that would not be easily achievable otherwise.
In the example of someone who is afraid of walking alone at night, we need to understand whether their fear is legitimate or unreasonable. If it is unreasonable, there could be value in confronting the fear through exposure. As always, the choice is between staying in your comfort zone where merely incremental change is possible and leaving your comfort zone where you can evolve and progress in ways that are hard to envision when inside the zone.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I question the extent or depth of my influence, but my greatest goal is to start a movement to eliminate bad bossing by turning mere bosses into great leaders.
This ambition has an origin story.
I had been an English professor when I was asked to become the dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at my university. The only problem was that there was no School of Humanities and Social Sciences, so I had to found it. I soon discovered that the nuts and bolts of organizing a school were easy, but how to lead it was another matter. I had spotty guidance, no mentoring, and poor models. Although I had vast experience as a leader, I had never really studied it, so I approached leadership as my new discipline of study. I embraced the discomfort needed for leadership growth in the same way I had always challenged myself and my students as a teacher. I soon understood that every leadership problem was, in fact, a teaching problem at its core. After many years, I left to serve as an academic vice president at two other colleges where I continued to push myself and others outside our comfort zones.
When I left higher education to become a leadership coach and consultant, I considered what really irked me. The answer was bad bossing. Sadly, bad bossing is the norm in our world, so much so that we barely even acknowledge it as the crisis it is. Worse still, we think of bosses as leaders, yet it is evident that very few bosses are leaders in any non-generic sense of the term and even fewer are great leaders. At the same time there are plenty of great leaders who are not and will never be bosses. Conflating the terms boss and leader has done this world a great disservice.
Meanwhile, these bad bosses wreak havoc on their people, on their organizations, and even on themselves. Imagine a world in which bosses actually led their people with human decency and emotional intelligence. Virtually everyone reading this will have had experience with dysfunctional bosses. Many, likely most, will have never experienced a boss who was a great leader. This state of affairs — our acceptance, even elevation of bad bossing — has caused untold damage in our businesses, our lives, and in our world. Bad bossing is a constant setback.
To rid the world of bad bossing I work with young bosses who are values-driven and don’t want to emulate the bad bosses they have had. I guide them to become great leaders so that they can find success without compromising their values. To do so, they will have to leave the comfort of their fancy title and then stuff their egos in a sack and throw them in the river. Only then, outside their comfort zones, can they begin to grow and learn the discipline of leadership.
This is the movement I seek to spark and lead: to make bad bossing unacceptable and great leadership the norm.
Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!
I would love to meet John Amaechi OBE. Amaechi was, I believe, the first NBA player from Great Britain and is most famous for being the first former NBA player to come out as gay publicly. While I admire the strength of his convictions, what fascinates me most is his work as an organizational psychologist and philosopher of leadership. He is light years ahead of me as a thinker.
Amaechi’s book The Promises of Giants lays out the premise that leaders need to understand that they are giants as they move through the world. Giants can inadvertently do great damage, so they need to constantly monitor their own behavior. Additionally, giants can do great good, and it is imperative that they always seek to do so.
In the context of comfort zones, a literal giant (and Amaechi is one while I am not) can never be fully comfortable. Amaechi relates a tale of one night when he let himself get caught up in dancing at a club and accidentally broke the nose of a fellow patron. That is why he is so conscientious about his status as a giant. Leaders too can never allow themselves to be fully comfortable lest they cause unintended damage. To lead is to constantly operate outside your comfort zone.
How can our readers follow you online?
My company is Guidance for Greatness. Visit my website:a guidanceforgreatness.com. I also write a weekly podcast and blog called On Leading with Greatness. Look for it on Substack at jimsalvucci.substack.com or listen on most podcast streaming services. Check me out on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/jim-salvucci-phd or email me directly at jim@jimsalvucci.com. Let me know what you think.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.
Jim Salvucci On How to Go Beyond Your Comfort Zone to Grow Both Personally and Professionally was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.