The Power of (Re)Dreaming in Leadership: Recognizing and Overcoming Stagnation

In this episode of Change Agent Leadership, I address a critical moment all leaders face: recognizing when growth slows down or habits become stale, signaling the need for transformation. Drawing inspiration from Nancy Duarte and Patti Sanchez’s book 'Illuminate,' I introduce the concept of the '(re) Dream' stage, a crucial phase where leaders can rejuvenate their vision and energy. 

The episode covers how to identify signs of stagnation, the importance of 're' dreaming for personal and organizational growth, and practical steps to implement this strategy. I encourage you to reflect on your current positions, recognize areas needing revitalization, and take proactive steps to enter a new era of leadership.

▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/d9vG4-dDyXM

▶️ Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Change Agent Leadership

00:50 Recognizing the Need to (Re) Dream

02:16 Understanding the Bell Curve of Growth

04:57 Signs of Maturity and Approaching Decline

10:01 Practical Steps to (Re) Dream

16:27 The Role of a Torch Bearer

19:01 Weekly Challenge and Final Thoughts

You’ll learn:

• Why maturity isn’t the finish line—and what to do when momentum plateaus
• How to spot the signs that you’re drifting instead of growing
• How to apply the (re)Dream framework to your spiritual life, health, relationships, and leadership
• Four practical questions to help you re-dream your next era

Catch full episodes of video versions and other leadership videos on my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Jonathan-Hankin

Download Free Leadership Toolkits → https://www.jonathanhankin.com/leadership-toolkit-library

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Transcript

  Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Change Agent Leadership. Today we're talking about something every leader faces, but few leaders actually prepare for. It's a moment when what used to work stops working.   When growth slows, or when your team loses momentum, your habits feel stale. Good habits feel stale.

And maybe your spiritual or emotional life just feels fine, but not alive. Have you been there?  Well, I have, and Nancy Dwt and Pat Satchin, I think I pronounced their names right. Call this the rere stage or moment in their book Illuminate.   And honestly, this moment is where maturity meets stagnation is where most every meaningful transformation begins.

You would think, well. Maturity. Moving to stagnation, that's a bad thing.  It can be, but it actually can lead to a time too if you recognize it, which is what we're gonna talk about today.   If you recognize it, it's a great time to actually (re) Dream into the next stage of life.  So if you're feeling any of the things I mentioned above, well today, I wanna help all of us understand this better.

Why (re) Dreaming is essential for leaders, teams, and organizations. Also, how to recognize. Maybe when you're at the top of the curve, we're gonna show a curve here in a little bit. When you're at the top of the curve and you're maturing or arriving in your location, in your leadership where you are currently, well, what does that actually mean?

Before you start to decline too far, how to (re) Dream your personal life and leadership for the next year. Or the next season of life. And then how often, you know, if you're, I'm a person of faith. If, if you are a person of faith, how can God use these moments to lead you into a new era? Like what does that era look like and how do I know where I'm supposed to go?

This can be a very practical, I hope all my episodes are practical, but this one's very practical. We're gonna show some graphs and some next steps that you can take in self-evaluation, especially as we come into a new year. ,   And I hope that it sparks within you a d(re) Dream to maybe (re) Dream to maybe recognize, Hey, have I maybe like maxed out here.

Am I kind of, um, hitting a rut?  So how does every leader need to (re) Dream and why does every leader need to (re) Dream? Well, let's start with the visual.  We're gonna put the first visual up here, and this is a bell curve. You've seen this many times. Some people call it the S-curve of growth, but everywhere from business strategy to human development to spiritual formation, it has these five stages on it, which is start, grow, mature, decline, and then death.

So every ministry, every company, every project, every relationship, and yes, every leader, including myself, has moved through these, this curve multiple times. I mean, and on the left hand side, you're gonna see the innovation is going up. And time is passing. On the bottom there, on the X axis. So one of the things to keep in mind here is, there's many ways to look at this.

Uh, one simple way is that, well, where am I on this thing? We're talking about cycles of life and cycles of maturity. Um, and so what time is it? Where are you at? Are you growing right now entering the mature stage? Which is great.

Um, maybe you're excited where you are, but maybe you're starting to, you've. You've plateaued a little bit and you're starting to decline. Well, what is that? How far are you declining before either your job, which is going to lead to a change or to stagnation? And so we want to look at what most leaders get wrong,   which is they think maturity means they've arrived.

In other words, their innovation, their thought press has gone up. They've, they've arrived. They know what's happening. They're comfortable. But the truth is, maturity is not the finish line.  Maturity is the beginning of decline if you're not careful unless you choose. To rere. So what does that actually look like?

Well, I'm gonna put another slide up here. This is what, in the book Illuminate, they talk about how to (re) Dream,   and so instead of going into decline, there's a little bit of decline here. You can see the solid line there a little bit.

It turns into a dotted line because you actually stop declining because you've begun to (re) Dream. And so you can't avoid this entire bell cycle here. You, you are going to decline, but you can choose how to respond to it in a positive way, and instead of moving into decline too far, move into a rere. How does that happen?

Well, we're gonna talk today several ways to recognize and to move into a (re) Dream cycle, and then also how to zoom out a little bit.  And so let's talk about how to recognize you're at the top of the curve. So how do you know when you're possibly at the mature stage or just maybe you're hitting a wall? This has happened to me.

You might just be hitting a wall and you actually haven't fully matured.  You just need to work through something. So let's go through three major signs that you're in maturity and approaching decline.   So sign number one is what used to be energizing to you now feels routine. You're still doing the same things and they still work actually, but they don't ignite you anymore.

 Um, I've been here recently actually and had to  wrestle through questions like, is it just me? Is it just me that I'm feeling mature, but actually we're still moving forward. Do I need to just push through? Am I looking at this the right way or has something shifted in my environment or inside of me? So those are just some internal questions to ask yourself.

 And then sometimes also maturity shows up in a positive situation, things are going well. Autopilot is on. The joy isn't there. And that's kind of where I was recently is, you know, things were going well and actually progressing, but I lost a little bit of my joy, momentum because I actually, um, matured in an area.

I hit a wall, so to speak, or the top that I could take it and somebody else needed to take it further under to. Other times it could be negative situation is impacting you. Maybe you're leading well, but your leader isn't leading you. In other words, you're pulling them up. Instead of being developed and you've kind of reached the climax there, the peak of your leadership ability based on who is leading you or the team that you're leading.

  Either way the result is the same. Energy is drained and it's assigned. You are in the mature stage and it's time to evaluate. Well, what's next?  Another way to um, recognize that you might be in the mature stage is you are maintaining not growing. As leaders,  at least I view it as we always want to be part of continuous improvement.

Uh, it's not to make change, to change. Um, you know, the, this podcast is change agent leadership. We want to change, but not just to change. Why do we wanna change? Well, we want to take things to the next level. Well, sometimes if we're just maintaining, we have. Not been able to continue to think through what does continuous improvement look like?

So in other words, meetings look the same, your habits look the same, your team looks the same. When I say looks the same.  If you reflected back three, six months or a year, have you progressed at the rate and the direction you wanted to go? Or have you matured, so to speak, at that level. In other words, you're in a steady rhythm, but momentum has plateaued.

 You know, it's just like losing energy. This lack of vision, um, creates a vicious cycle in our mind. Your, your, your mind gets foggy. Maybe you stop thinking long-term. This is subtle. This isn't like an overnight shift. Um, but you start. Not thinking long term. You start believing is this all there is? And it becomes harder to d(re) Dream because you're too busy maintaining and wondering, how do I break out of this maintaining cycle?

So that might be you. That's another one.  And then the third sign is you feel a low grade d(re) Dream stirring within you. But you ignore it. And I'll be honest.  Um, before I get into this one, we, I've had all three of these happen at different times, and that's why I'm sharing this, this is personal to me, is this is the place where leaders often get stuck in this third one because the safe d(re) Dream and the two true d(re) Dream are.

Risk averse may be at times. So the safe d(re) Dream is, yeah, we're just gonna hit the next goal. We're gonna increase 2%, 3%, and we're just gonna maintain. That's basically to me, is maintaining, well, what is the true d(re) Dream? What are you really feeling called to have you? Where are you now? Where have you been matured in your leadership or in life that's enabling you to do something else that might be.

A 10 x in your life, like, and when I say 10 x, I'm not talking just performance, but takes you from, yeah, I can do it to, wow. That would be game changer in my life and I could get so excited about that. It might not be where I'm at now, at my current business or my location. Maybe you start something on your own, but is that true d(re) Dream?

And this issue isn't just something that's new on the horizon.  The issue is that somewhere along the way we stopped perceiving. What could be,  so did you have a spark inside of you and you just kind of put it on the shelf? But now that shelf has a lot of dust. So maybe like me, you've been looking down at the current situation too long and you stopped looking ahead.

In other words, we anticipated that. Accepted what? This is all there is, and that's all that ever can be. It's a mindset. So if that's you, we wanna break that cycle today and (re) Dream together, no matter which one of those three, maybe there's a hybrid of those three that's affecting you.  But we wanna break that cycle 'cause we don't wanna stagnate and turn from maturity stagnation to decline.

Excuse me  So let's apply the re framework for our personal life as well as our business and leadership life. So let's make this practical. Think about your life in five areas, and you can label these however you want, but I think of them. First of all, my spiritual or my, uh, meditation life. So whatever your life is, how are you, um, reflecting daily to re be reenergized, whatever that is.

I don't know how you reenergize, but whatever that is, that's number one. Number two is your health. How are you having healthy habits? Number three is relationships. Number four is leadership habits. What are those growth habits? And number five is your calling in your d(re) Dream. That should always be part of your cycle.

 Is evaluating your calling and your d(re) Dream and then working on that. Otherwise, you're just gonna stagnate. So ask yourself in those five areas,   where have I matured? Where have I stopped growing? So is it in your quiet time? Is it in your meditation time?  Is it your energy level? Is it just matured? How about your communication?

Have you continued to improve in your communication, your creativity? Your marriage rhythms, whatever that looks like, um, your physical health, your leadership, whatever, rises to the top, write it down and we'll go and keep that in mind as we go through the rest of this episode.   This is also a good time to mention that you can download the free toolkit for this episode.

The link is in the show notes. Those are. A multi-page, um, just a highlight. You can go along with this episode and fill in the blanks many times.  And if you want a more multi-page leadership development toolkit, that is usually about five or six letter size pages that you can walk through your team with.

You can actually lead them in an exercise. It's like a, usually they're designed for a two hour workshop. Um, check out the subscription link in the show notes as well.   So the question is, where might I be declining? Remember I mentioned this  earlier, decline is subtle. It doesn't just sneak up. It actually sneaks up on you.

It doesn't just pounce on you. So again, where is it? Subtle. So where are you more distracted? You're less consistent, less joyful. You're maybe more tired or more reactive in situation, less hopeful feeling. Any of those things that your mindset is not where it should be. And then remember, you're not falling apart.

But   you are drifting and drift is the enemy of your calling. I mean, that is a key takeaway for today. Drifting in your life is the enemy of your calling. '  cause the more you drift, the more you will forget what your calling is.  Maturity is not the moment to stop straining for what's next. It's actually the moment that you need.

To rere. So use the toolkit to walk through this process instead of a New Year's resolution that none of us will likely keep.  Pick an area you want to (re) Dream and process how you will live that out in this next year.  So we've talked about, you know, how to reflect on what's to lining, but let's zoom out a little bit.

And I'm gonna put up another chart. So keep in mind that, um, as in the second image I put up, you know, we talk about arriving to mature, instead of moving into decline, we move into (re) Dream.  Well, this third chart is a reminder that you need to zoom out. That leadership develops in eras, not just events. We didn't arrive at this era.

At this event, um, the second slide, and now we're just gonna move into decline. No, the, this is a cycle you and I have been going through over our lives. So think about your own story, your early passion era. In other words, what got you going in leadership or what got you going, whatever got. Work life.

You're in your busy building area. How did you build that? Maybe you're in that area now where you're building and developing and learning and growing. Well, what is that going to lead to? How about your family and foundational era, your calling and clarity era, or even maybe leadership maturity? Again, these are errors.

On this screen you see these three eras and there's multiple S-curves that are on here. And so now where are you? You may be stepping into a new brand new area, and if so,  it's time to ask you and I ourself, which area am I stepping out of and which era do I need to step into? In other words, have I been the area, an era that I've been in?

 Is it an era where I have been. Um, maintaining and growing and getting excited about something, and now I need to let that go. I need to bring pieces with me. We're gonna talk about that, but what is the next era that needs to begin with a (re) Dream? And part of it is the (re) Dream. So let's talk about how to (re) Dream the.

  Four questions to ask, and here is a simple framework I want you to use this month. It's not necessarily a one day thing with your team, your spouse, or just, I would encourage you to start with yourself. What is this? Number one, what has matured in my life or leadership? In other words, what's become smooth, predictable, or routine?

And write that down. Number two. What is quietly def declining in my life, and that's where am I losing energy, passion, clarity, effectiveness. Number three, what needs to be d(re) Dreamed? In other words, not restarted. This isn't a complete restart. It's what needs to be renewed, refreshed, re-energized. There's another reword out there somewhere, but whatever it is, you need to (re) Dream that area.

So what needs to be (re) Dreamed? And then number four, what is one small step that you can take this week? Now again, this is not a big d(re) Dream. This is really a small spark. There's that one step that will lead to that next stage in life. Small sparks start new curves, and this is what leaders do. They don't just see decline.

They light the torch for what sees season is next.  What era is next? So we started with the bell curve. We wanna move past the bell curve into the (re) Dream. We zoomed out a little bit. Into the epic tail thing. You see that, saw that on your screen, which is moving into different eras, and you wanted to reflect on what era are you in, where have you been, and where do you want to go?

And as the leader, I do wanna highlight, they talk about this in the book about being a torch bearer and they call leaders torch bearers. And so people don't just see. The destination. This isn't just about where you're going. This is really important. As we enter a new season of life, a new era,  we want to illuminate the path for ourselves and for others.

Many times we just wanna know where am I going and how do I get there? But we want to be able to illuminate what, what's next?  And they talk about five things that torch bears do. They speak? In other words, they tell what's happening around them, where they're going. They tell stories to remind people of where they've been, what has happened, and where they should probably consider going in the future.

That's related to past stories, create rituals. In other words, what are habits that we want to carry on for the use symbols that inspire? In other words, what are mile markers that we can use? But the most important one I wanna cover today is they listen, they emphasize, and they un empathize and they understand.

The traveler's fear when stepping out into a new curb.  It's dangerous waters, right? It's unknown territory. Every time you (re) Dream your life or your team, you're stepping into a new role and each of us are leading someone or some project, if not at a minimum, we're leading ourself.   So this year as a torch bearer are challenges for us.

To listen for cues up to what stage people are in and listen for cues for ourselves. What stage am I in? At the beginning I talked about. Are you starting to lose momentum and drive and other things? So again, listen to those cues in your life and write them down, and then also speak truth into those moments.

It's not that if you're starting to stagnate, that's a failure. It may be a time to (re) Dream. And then last, share stories that remind people to (re) Dream again. And the person you have to share those stories with first is actually yourself. Many times we get in our heads that things are declining or we're in a bad spot.

 Um, I have an episode on active waiting, and part of that active waiting is talking to ourself and reminding ourselves that we always go negative. So how are things going well? That we just don't see. This is where leadership looks like a (re) Dream cycle. Instead of going into decline, we need to be able to assess where we are and move ourselves and others into a RERE (re) Dream cycle.

So I'm gonna give you just a couple really quick tools for this week. Number one is a seven day challenge. To just do in the next seven days and, um, choose one action to reignite momentum. So pick one of these. You could pick a couple of them. Um, you could be a 15 minute prayer meditation time just to reflect.

As to where you are. Another one is a single health habit. What is, if you felt that your health is declining and you want to do it well, what is one single health habit? Well, how do I reconnect with one person? That might be another one. Maybe write down one d(re) Dream you've been ignoring. That spark that was there and it's kind of gone out a little bit.

But you want to reignite that. So write it down and consider meditating on what would that look like to (re) Dream. And then last, I'd encourage each of us to block 90 minutes for strategic thinking time. In other words, take an hour and a half. I know it's a lot of time, but go through this toolkit. In the 90 minutes that I, you can download and rethink (re) Dream, what would it look like for you to (re) Dream this next year to reignite that spark and to take it on?

  And the next is error reflection. I had that slide up for errors that were in. And then ask the question, what was I or who was I in the last era? In other words. Was I more of a follower, but now I've moved into a leader? Was I more of a dictator and a micromanager? But actually now I'm actually leading.

Well, so in other words, what am I becoming in the new era? What do I want to become in that new era? Well, I'm progressing in stages. I want to now be. Fill in the blank and then think through what can and can't move with you into this next era. In other words, what are some habits you wanna leave in that last era?

You don't wanna bring those with you, but what are things that you want to learn, that you have learned that you want to take to the next era with you? Those are critical.  This is not about starting over. I've mentioned that several times. People get stuck on, oh, I just have to start over from scratch.

Forgetting the past. No, you do want to ignore the bad stuff or you don't wanna ignore it. Actually, you wanna learn from it. But how do you take the good things and (re) Dream? It's not just starting over. And maybe you do need to just start a new d(re) Dream, that's fine too. But many times that is overwhelming if that's our beginning stage.

So think of those questions to create clarity and courage in your mind. I just wanna leave you with this.  Your job isn't. To necessarily create a new thing, your job is to perceive what is next and courageously step into it. And that takes time, that takes process.  So your challenge this week is before you end even today, or at least this week, identify one area that needs to be (re) Dreamed.

Where do you need to go to re.  Write down one small action that you're gonna take in the next seven days. I gave you some options there. Take one or two of those and actually do it in the next seven days. Share it with somebody you trust to hold you accountable. Someone's not going to judge you, but it's actually going to encourage you and be like, yeah, that.

That. I don't know what that spark is, but I'm going to help hold you accountable for that. Remember, small choices shape the next era of your leadership.  If this episode added value to your leadership today, which I really hope it did, I hope this. Rere has been exciting and challenging for you. It honestly has helped me over this last year to just consider where I am, where do I want to go, where have I been stuck, and how do I get outta that rut that I'm in?

It wasn't a bad rut, but I was actually stuck a bit and how do I get outta that? So I hope this is helpful.  If it was for you, hit like and subscribe, uh, drop a comment like, how has this helped you? Download the toolkit.  This helps all of us as we learn and grow together. And if you're looking for a coach or wanna be on the Change Agent Leadership podcast as a guest on the podcast or as a.

Uh, coaching session with me. Click on the show notes. Don't forget to download the toolkit. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Hankin, your change agent Coach. I encourage you, please keep questioning like, where are you in your leadership journey? Keep growing and developing every single day and keep leading change by starting with yourself.