Why Growth is Never Just About the Individual
- 7 hours ago
- 9 min read
Written by Nassim Ebrahimi, Developmental Psychologist, Mental Performance Coach, Author, and Speaker
Coach Nassim Ebrahimi, PhD, is the founder of Becoming My Stronger Me, LLC. As a developmental psychologist, mental performance coach, podcaster, and author, she empowers athletes, coaches, and parents to unlock confidence, mental resilience, and peak performance through evidence-based strategies grounded in sport psychology and human development.
When someone is struggling to develop or perform consistently, we often look first at the individual. We question their confidence, motivation, discipline, resilience, or willingness to work. In many organizations, the assumption is that if the person changes enough, better performance will follow. There is value in helping individuals strengthen these skills, but that perspective is incomplete.
As a developmental psychologist and mental performance coach, I have spent years observing leaders, employees, teams, families, athletes, and other high-performance environments. One pattern continues to stand out: people do not develop in isolation. They develop through an ongoing interaction with the environments around them.
A capable employee can begin questioning their ability in a workplace where mistakes consistently lead to criticism. A motivated team member can gradually stop contributing ideas when speaking up carries social risk. A high-performing executive can become increasingly hesitant when every decision is scrutinized, but little meaningful support is provided. At home, even confident people may begin withholding parts of themselves when relationships repeatedly communicate that vulnerability, uncertainty, or disagreement are unsafe.
In each situation, focusing only on the individual misses an important part of what is happening. If we want to understand growth and performance, we also have to understand the environment in which people are developing.
Development does not happen in isolation
Developmental psychology has long recognized the importance of context. Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological perspective emphasized that human development occurs through interactions between individuals and the environments and systems surrounding them. This challenges the idea that growth is simply the product of individual effort.
People absolutely influence their own development. Their choices, behaviors, motivation, beliefs, effort, and willingness to practice all matter. At the same time, the environments in which those behaviors occur continually provide information about what is valued, what is safe, what is possible, and what happens when someone struggles.
This is particularly important in professional environments. Leaders establish more than expectations. Managers provide more than feedback. Teams create more than workflows. Families provide more than support. Each contributes to an environment in which another person is learning what challenge, failure, progress, belonging, and success mean.
So the question cannot only be, “What does this person need to change?” We also need to ask, “What is this environment teaching them?”
Every environment influences development
An environment does not have to be intentionally developmental to influence development. Everyday interactions continually provide information about what is expected and what is possible.
Consider what happens within the environments you influence:
How does a manager respond after a mistake?
What happens when an employee disagrees with a senior leader?
Who receives visibility and opportunity?
What behaviors are rewarded?
What happens when someone takes a thoughtful risk and it does not work?
How are concerns, uncertainty, or disagreement handled?
Over time, experiences like these shape how people approach challenge.
An employee who learns that mistakes can be examined without humiliation may become more willing to experiment, speak honestly, and learn quickly. Someone who experiences every mistake as a threat to reputation, opportunity, or belonging may become increasingly cautious, even when innovation requires greater freedom.
The same dynamic exists at home. A family member who learns that uncertainty can be expressed without judgment may be more likely to communicate openly. Someone who learns that vulnerability will be dismissed, criticized, or used against them may begin withholding what they think or feel.
The environment is influencing development in both situations. The lesson is simply different.
Challenge and support need each other
Creating a supportive environment does not mean removing difficulty. Development requires challenge.
The important distinction is whether people perceive themselves as having sufficient resources to engage with the demands in front of them. Research on challenge and threat states helps explain why similar demands can produce very different responses. Perceptions of self-efficacy, control, and available resources influence whether a demanding situation is more likely to be experienced as a challenge or a threat.
This matters in leadership. Giving someone a stretch assignment can accelerate development when the challenge is meaningful and the individual believes they have the resources and support to engage with it. The same assignment can become threatening when expectations are unclear, failure feels unsafe, or the person believes they have been placed in a situation they cannot realistically navigate.
This does not mean effective leaders should make every experience comfortable. Growth regularly involves discomfort, uncertainty, frustration, and struggle. The goal is not to eliminate those experiences, but to create conditions in which people can engage with them productively.
Effective developmental environments communicate two things simultaneously, "This will challenge you. Growth is possible."
Challenge without sufficient support can become overwhelming. Support without meaningful challenge can limit development. Growth often occurs in the interaction between the two.
Belief changes what people are willing to attempt
Albert Bandura's work on self-efficacy demonstrated that people's beliefs about their capabilities influence their choices, effort, persistence, and responses to difficulty, making belief much more than positive thinking. When people believe progress is possible, they are more likely to attempt difficult tasks, invest effort, seek feedback, and continue after setbacks. When they stop believing their actions can meaningfully influence progress, their behavior often changes. They may begin avoiding difficult situations, protecting themselves from risk, withdrawing, or disengaging altogether.
This is why describing someone as “unmotivated” can sometimes prevent us from asking a more useful question: Do they still believe they can make progress?
An employee who consistently receives correction without meaningful acknowledgment of improvement may eventually question whether their effort matters. A team member who repeatedly takes initiative but remains excluded from decisions may reach a similar conclusion. An executive who is held accountable for outcomes without adequate authority or support may gradually stop taking thoughtful risks.
What appears to be a motivation problem may partly be a belief problem, and that belief does not develop separately from the environment.
Motivation is not entirely internal
We also tend to speak about motivation as though people either possess it or they do not. Self-Determination Theory offers a different perspective. Research by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan suggests that environments supporting autonomy, competence, and relatedness are more likely to promote higher quality, self-directed motivation.
People benefit from experiencing:
Autonomy: I have some ownership.
Belonging: I feel connected and supported.
Competence: I can develop the ability to do this.
These needs help explain why the same person can appear highly motivated in one environment and disengaged in another. The individual has not necessarily changed. The conditions may have.
A leader cannot manufacture intrinsic motivation inside another person. What leaders can do is create conditions that make meaningful engagement and ownership more likely. At home, the same principle applies. People are more likely to invest in relationships and responsibilities when they experience some agency, feel capable of contributing, and believe they matter within the environment.
Recognizing progress helps sustain development
One of the most important developmental conditions may also be one of the easiest to overlook. People need meaningful evidence that progress is occurring.
Professional environments naturally emphasize outcomes because outcomes are visible. Revenue, promotions, deadlines, performance ratings, targets, and project completion all provide useful information, but they cannot tell the entire developmental story.
A leader can make a thoughtful decision that ultimately produces an unfavorable result. An employee can improve communication, judgment, or collaboration even if the business outcome does not immediately reflect it. A team can make significant progress in trust and decision-making before those gains show up in quarterly metrics.
The important question is not simply whether we can measure more than outcomes, but what happens when people can recognize meaningful evidence of their own development. Evidence of growth might include:
A manager handling a difficult conversation more effectively.
A team member raising a concern earlier instead of waiting until a problem becomes serious.
An executive delegating more effectively rather than controlling every decision.
An employee asking for clarification instead of pretending to understand.
A parent responding with more curiosity and less reactivity during a tense conversation at home.
These moments may never appear on a dashboard, but they matter. Recognizing progress provides information about capability. It helps people see that their actions can produce change. That evidence can strengthen belief, reinforce motivation, clarify what is working, and increase willingness to engage with the next challenge.
Progress does more than tell people where they have been. It can influence where they believe they are capable of going.
Development should increase agency
Ultimately, development should not create permanent dependence on the person leading it. The goal is not to create employees who always need a manager to direct them, leaders who continually need external validation, or family members who depend on someone else to solve every problem.
Development should gradually increase agency. Over time, can the person recognize what is happening, reflect on the experience, identify what they need, and recognize strengths they already possess? Can they make an intentional adjustment, determine what they want to practice next, and carry that learning into another environment?
This is where development becomes transferable. A leader who learns to regulate their response during conflict is developing more than a workplace skill. That same capacity may improve how they navigate tension at home, uncertainty in a boardroom, difficult client conversations, or high-stakes decisions.
The environment changes. The capacity travels with the person.
Development is never finished
Development is rarely a straight path. People encounter confidence, belonging, emotional regulation, identity, discipline, motivation, and pressure repeatedly across their lives. A capacity that feels strong in one environment can be tested again by a promotion, a new organization, a difficult boss, a leadership opportunity, a business setback, a family transition, or a different level of responsibility. These moments do not necessarily mean previous development has disappeared. They provide a new environment in which familiar capacities must be applied differently.
This is why I increasingly think of development as a spiral rather than a straight line. We may return to familiar challenges, but we do not return as the same person. We bring previous experiences, skills, relationships, reflection, and perspective with us. The challenge may look familiar. The person engaging with it has changed.
Rethinking the responsibility of leaders
None of this removes personal accountability. Individual effort matters. Preparation matters. Standards matter. Choices matter. Acknowledging the role of the environment broadens accountability rather than eliminating it.
When someone is struggling, we can still ask what skills that person needs to develop. We should also examine the conditions in which we are asking that development to occur. Consider:
Does this person believe progress is possible?
Are expectations challenging without becoming chronically overwhelming?
Does the environment make room for learning from mistakes?
Does the person experience meaningful ownership over their development?
Do they feel connected and supported?
Can they recognize evidence that they are improving?
Are we evaluating only outcomes, or are we paying attention to development?
These questions shift the role of leadership. A leader is not simply setting expectations. A manager is not simply assigning work. A team is not simply completing tasks. A family is not simply managing responsibilities. Each is helping create developmental conditions. Those conditions influence what another person learns to believe about challenge, progress, mistakes, and themselves.
Final thoughts
We spend considerable time trying to develop stronger, more confident, resilient, disciplined, motivated, and capable people. We should spend just as much time examining the environments in which we are asking them to become those things.
Individual effort matters. Skills matter. Standards matter. Performance matters. But growth is never just about the individual. People develop through an ongoing interaction between who they are, what they believe, what they experience, and the environments around them. The most effective developmental environments do not remove challenge. They help people develop the capacity and belief to meet it. They create space to practice, struggle, reflect, adjust, recognize progress, and gradually take greater ownership of their own development.
Consider an environment you currently influence, whether as a leader, executive, manager, parent, colleague, or mentor. Instead of asking only what the people around you need to improve, ask, "What is this environment teaching people about who they are capable of becoming?"
The answer may reveal as much about their future development as anything you are explicitly teaching them.
Nassim Ebrahimi, Developmental Psychologist, Mental Performance Coach, Author, and Speaker
Coach Nassim Ebrahimi, PhD, is the founder of Becoming My Stronger Me, LLC. As a developmental psychologist, mental performance coach, podcaster (Becoming My Stronger Me podcast), author (The Stronger Mind and Baller Goals), and speaker, she empowers athletes, coaches, and parents to unlock mental resilience and peak performance under pressure through evidence-based strategies grounded in sport psychology and human development. She holds a PhD in Developmental Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University. Through her work, she supports individuals and teams in developing the mental skills needed to thrive in sport and life. Her mission is to help people train their minds with the same intention they train their bodies.
References:
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.
Deci, E. L., and Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behaviour. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227 to 268.
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.
Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological wellbeing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(6), 1069 to 1081.
Brown, B. (2010). The gifts of imperfection. Hazelden Publishing.
