Growth is Personal Before It's Professional

Growth Is Personal Before It's Professional

Why the best coaching starts with what they want, not what you need.

One of the most misunderstood truths in frontline leadership is this: if you want professional performance, you have to start with personal purpose.

Years ago, I was assigned a turnaround project; an underperforming retail location, down to its final year on lease. The team was short on experience but not on heart. I didn’t need another strategy.  What I needed was someone who could ignite belief on the floor. Not a warm body. A frontline warrior.

And I found one, but not in the form most leaders would’ve accepted.

His name was Adrian. His reputation? Complicated. His ambition? Unmistakable.

I called a peer I trusted, someone who helped shape my own growth and laid out the stakes. He didn’t hesitate. He gave me one name.

“Adrian.”

I knew of him. An industry vet who’d spent time crushing quotas for our biggest competitors. But inside our organization? His story was riddled with labels: bad attitude, lone wolf, ego too big to fit in the break room. When I pushed back on the recommendation, my peer shot straight:

“You’re a coach. He needs one. Trust me.”

So I did.

I swung a trade to bring Adrian over, didn’t take much, considering his current leader was prepping a PIP. But I learned one key thing during that call:

“He’s got some shoe company thing… you can tell it’s always on his mind.”

Bingo. Now I knew where to start.

I’ll never forget Adrian’s first day. I saw a large wrapped van pull up with a brand name on the side, had to be him. I met him at the door with energy and gratitude.

“Thanks for coming over.”

His tone? Jaded, but honest:
“Well… I had to, didn’t I?”

In that first week, I didn’t correct. I didn’t coach. I watched. I listened.

And what I saw? Tenacity. Curiosity. A genuine desire to connect with people; not just sell to them. He wasn’t transactional. He was relational. He was hungry.

When we finally sat down for a formal 1:1, he was still guarded—just like I was. He cracked a joke to cut the tension:

“I was especially surprised to find out you’re a human and not a robot.”

We both laughed. That wall came down a bit. Then he got real.

He was worried. We were in a low-traffic location. And for a commission + base role, foot traffic meant everything. But he wasn’t just chasing money. He was chasing a dream. He had a number he needed to hit to take his shoe company full-time.

That was his why. That was the fuel.

I laid out the map. Not an easy road, but a winnable one. We’d go hyperlocal. Build trust. Convert relationships into loyalty. He committed. So did I.

We built a neighborhood audience from the ground up. Referrals started coming in. We launched outreach to small businesses already using our services, got them into the store, helped them find better plans, and in turn helped them grow. They weren’t leads. They were partners.

Adrian crushed it. He maxed his comp plan for the first time at our company. Outperformed top sellers from high-volume locations. Led the market in conversion rates. We finished the quarter #2 in the region, up from 42nd.

We turned the location around. Lease got renewed. Other teams in the region started feeling our momentum. Friendly competition lit fires. We even outsold our local Small Business team—yeah, that raised some eyebrows.

But none of that was the headline.

The real story? Adrian grew. Personally. Professionally. Authentically.

A few years later, he stepped out to pursue XLfeet full-time. No more shoes out of a van. He opened a retail store backed by a full eComm DTC experience helping customers find footwear that fit. Not just in size, but in spirit. As they say:

“Fitting XLfeet, is no extra-large feat.”

Today, they’re 16 successful years in, with a loyal fan base and a brand that refuses to settle. And Adrian? Still pushing boundaries. Still building.

We’ve stayed connected through the years. Sometimes life gets loud, but we seem to find our way to a cup of coffee from time to time. And we recognize that we’re always tethered by that season, two people growing into something more.

What he may not realize is what watching him taught me. His courage to bet on himself helped me find the guts to bet on me, years later. It’s wild how people we lead can leave marks on our own trajectory long after we’ve stopped leading them.

Here’s the truth:

Meeting your people where they are shouldn’t be rare. But it takes discipline. And patience. And humility.

It takes setting your agenda aside long enough to learn theirs.

Being a frontline-first leader means seeing beyond the metric and learning what’s really driving the human in front of you.

It’s the courage to coach the person, not just correct the behavior.

It’s the belief that when people grow, results follow.

It’s knowing that growth is personal before it’s ever professional.

And if you’re lucky, like I was, you don’t just get to witness it… you get to be changed by it too.