The Strategic Power of Being a Beginner
Leadership doesn’t usually fail because of intelligence. It fails because thinking becomes rigid. And rigidity often sets in when leaders stop becoming beginners anywhere in their lives.
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Leadership rewards competence.
It rewards decisiveness, experience, and confidence under pressure. As responsibilities grow, leaders are expected to know more, anticipate more, and get it right more often.
But there’s a quiet risk embedded in that progression.
As responsibility expands, experimentation often shrinks.
And when experimentation shrinks, so does perspective.
When Efficiency Becomes the Enemy
Experience makes leaders efficient. Efficiency makes systems run smoothly. And smooth systems feel like success.
But the brain is built to automate what becomes familiar. Familiar routes require less energy. Familiar patterns demand less attention. Familiar solutions feel safer.
Over time, this creates a subtle shift: leaders stop actively thinking and start defaulting.
Default thinking isn’t laziness. It’s neurological efficiency. The brain conserves energy by repeating what has worked before.
The problem is that leadership rarely fails because of effort. It fails because of rigidity.
Most leadership challenges are not intelligence problems. They are perspective problems.
And perspective narrows when novelty disappears.
The Brain Is Designed for Change
Neuroscience tells us something important: the adult brain remains plastic throughout life. It continues forming new neural connections in response to unfamiliar experiences.
Novelty strengthens cognitive flexibility — the ability to shift perspectives, adapt to ambiguity, and generate multiple possible solutions.
Cognitive flexibility is not a personality trait. It’s a mental skill. And like any skill, it weakens when unused.
When leaders consistently operate in familiar environments, familiar conversations, and familiar routines, their brains optimize for predictability. Autopilot becomes the default state.
Autopilot is efficient. It is also limiting.
Introduce something unfamiliar — a new environment, a new skill, a new context — and the brain wakes up. Attention sharpens. Assumptions loosen. Observation increases.
That neurological shift is not decorative. It is strategic.
Beginnerhood as Leadership Training
High performers often resist being beginners.
There is discomfort in not being good at something. Discomfort in awkwardness. Discomfort in visible learning curves.
Yet beginnerhood activates the exact muscles leadership requires:
Tolerance for ambiguity
Patience in the face of slow progress
Adaptability when plans don’t work
Curiosity without guaranteed outcomes
When someone learns a new creative skill, experiments with a physical discipline, or navigates an unfamiliar setting, they are not just acquiring a hobby.
They are training their brain to respond differently to uncertainty.
That training transfers.
A leader who regularly practices being new at something becomes more resilient when a business strategy fails. More experimental when a team dynamic shifts. More composed when the path forward is unclear.
The value isn’t in mastering the new skill.
The value is in strengthening the neural pathways that support flexibility.
Growth Doesn’t Always Look Impressive
There is a cultural expectation that growth must be visible and productive.
If you learn something new, it should improve your résumé.
If you develop a skill, it should become monetizable.
If you invest time, it should generate measurable return.
But not all growth is meant to be optimized.
Some growth exists to keep the mind alive.
Trying something unfamiliar without turning it into a performance metric interrupts the constant drive toward mastery and outcome. It reintroduces curiosity for its own sake.
Curiosity is not soft. It is destabilizing in the best way.
It challenges assumptions. It stretches comfort zones. It invites experimentation.
And experimentation is the lifeblood of innovation.
When leaders stop experimenting in low-stakes environments, they become less willing to experiment in high-stakes ones.
That’s when thinking gets smaller.
Environment Shapes Thinking
Perspective is not only shaped internally. It is shaped by environment.
When people operate in the same physical spaces, with the same routines and the same conversations, their thinking patterns stabilize. Predictability increases. So does cognitive narrowing.
Change the environment, and attention shifts.
Travel often creates this effect because it disrupts autopilot. But disruption does not require distance. It requires unfamiliarity.
Working from a different setting. Hosting meetings offsite. Engaging with people outside one’s industry. Spending time in communities with different assumptions.
Each disruption introduces new stimuli. The brain must observe, interpret, and adapt.
Adaptation strengthens flexibility.
Flexibility strengthens leadership.
Keeping the World Big
There is another subtle benefit to deliberate novelty: perspective on problems.
When a leader’s world is small — confined to the same routines and pressures — challenges feel enormous. They dominate mental space.
When the world expands, problems often retain their size but lose their dominance.
Exposure to different environments, disciplines, and ways of thinking keeps assumptions loose. It prevents any single context from becoming totalizing.
A big world creates proportional thinking.
Proportional thinking prevents overreaction.
Overreaction is often what damages leadership most.
A Strategic Invitation
The goal is not to collect hobbies.
It is not to escape responsibility.
It is not to reinvent identity every year.
The goal is to remain mentally flexible.
That might mean choosing one unfamiliar skill for a season. Trying something physical if work is abstract. Engaging something tactile if work is strategic. Entering spaces where expertise does not transfer.
Keep the stakes low.
Set a time boundary.
Avoid turning it into performance.
Notice what changes — not in competence, but in patience. In experimentation. In response to failure.
Sometimes the most strategic thing a leader can do is become a beginner again.
Because when leaders stop trying new things, their thinking gets smaller — even if their responsibilities continue to grow.
And leadership depends less on certainty than it does on perspective.
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[00:00:00] The Real Risk for Leaders
The goal is not to escape. The goal is to change perspective. When your environment changes, your thinking changes. When your thinking changes, your leadership follows. When leaders stop trying new things, their thinking gets smaller, even if their responsibilities get bigger.
Welcome to Badass Softie, a podcast for leaders who are unapologetically ambitious and want to lead with heart because you're allowed to chase big goals without losing what makes you human. I'm your host, Dr. JJ Peterson, and if you are listening to this when it comes out in real time. The Winter Olympics are starting.
[00:00:45] Curling, Curiosity, and Beginner Mode
I am fully obsessed. I love the Olympics. I always have summer, winter does not matter. I am all in. I will watch sports that I have never watched before and suddenly have very strong opinions about how they're doing and who should be winning. I also feel like, you know, I could absolutely do. All of them, maybe if I really tried.
And that confidence has gotten me into trouble more than once. Like the time we were at our son's birthday party and I decided to do a flip into the foam pit at this trampoline park. And, it took me a half hour just to climb out because I was so short that my feet couldn't touch the floor. And I kept telling everybody, look away. Look away. Oh, it was a nightmare.
But still. I feel like I could do it and I want to be involved. I wanna be an Olympian, be involved in some way. And my dream actually kind of partly came true at one point when I got to do messaging and marketing, some training with the US Olympic Committee and I went to Colorado Springs and they showed me around the training facilities, and I may or may not have cried when they took me into this vault slash museum area and let me hold actual Olympic medals. I was in heaven because I love the Olympics.
And the Winter Olympics have a special place in my heart, partly because I feel like they're the underdog Olympics.
Like they don't quite get the same hype as summer games. So I'm for the underdog, but really, if I'm completely honest, it is mostly about curling. Because curling is my jam. For years I joked that curling was how I was going to be an Olympian. That's how I would participate because it felt attainable 'cause when I look at it, it's basically bocce ball on ice and I'm really good at bocce ball.
I also love that everyone looks like they could be your favorite math teacher or your uncle Bob, you know, so. I did what any reasonable person does when they fixate on a niche Olympic sport is, I read about curling. I watch curling. I learned the rules, I learned the language. I fully committed. I even joined 'cause I was living there at the time, the Southern California Curling Association.
Was I ever able to curl with the SECA? No, I was not. But I do have the membership card and I did meet strangers at a bar to talk passionately about curling. So that counts.
And then a few years ago. I actually got to try curling. I was so excited, and let me tell you, I was terrible. When I say terrible, I mean truly awful.
It was so fun. It was one of my favorite memories of all time, and yet I was awful. It looks so easy on tv, I mean, you're just sliding across the ice. But I had to get myself into positions that a 45-year-old body was not used to or prepared for, and I slipped. I fell, who knew that balancing on one leg while kneeling, throwing a heavy rock would be so difficult.
I was sore in places I did not know existed for days. And I know your next question. The answer is yes. My team did win, and yes, I did throw the final rock that secured said win. Now granted, I fell over while doing it, in front of everybody, but I didn't care. It was an absolute blast.
[00:04:45] Why the Brain Needs Novelty
And really it was one of the best reminders for me of something that I believe in deeply, and it's actually what I want to talk about today.
Here's the thing. I am committed to learning and doing something new and creative that sits outside my normal skillset and comfort zone. Every single year I try something new. That year it was curling. Over the years, I've done stained glass. I took a cheese making class. I learned the mandolin, at one point. I even did cross stitch, which of course meant that everyone I know got really bad and really small cross stitch gifts for Christmas that year.
One year. One year, I actually spent the time to figure out what it would take to win a blue ribbon at the Tennessee State Fair. I did a lot of research on the categories and tried to figure out what are the crafts that I could actually do and possibly win, and. I went all in and I did it and I actually won.
I am a Tennessee State fair blue ribbon winner. The category was, miniature dioramas fairy habitat, adult divisions, smaller than 12 by 12. So if you want to challenge me, you can, but. I am officially the best in the state in that category. That's the kind of thing I would do. I always challenge myself to learn something new, to figure out a new craft, a new skill.
Take me outside of my comfort zone, something that I wasn't going to be very good at. Did I ever master any of these skills? No. Do I still do most of them or really hardly any of them also? No. But every year I still try something new.
And for a long time I assumed these things were good for me. They made my world feel better. I had a lot of joy. They kept me curious. They made me feel more alive. But recently I started asking a different question. Is there actually something happening here or is, you know, is something that is actually beneficial or is this just something, the benefit, something I made up to justify my hobbies?
So I went looking and here is the headline. Your brain is designed to change.
[00:07:12] Cognitive Flexibility and Leadership
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the adult brain remains plastic throughout life, meaning it continues to form new neural connections in response to learning and experience. And I think sometimes the word plastic, when we're talking about our brain gets misunderstood.
Plastic does not mean soft or weak. It means adaptable. Research from Harvard Medical School shows that when adults learn new skills, especially unfamiliar ones, the brain physically reorganizes itself. New neural pathways form existing ones are strengthened, and communication between regions improves.
Your brain actually gets stronger. This isn't just kind of motivational language. This is observable on brain scans. Because here's the thing, when you do the same thing over and over, your brain becomes efficient, and efficiency is good for routine, but leadership often doesn't fail because of lack of routine.
It fails when thinking becomes rigid. Novelty builds flexibility.
There is a specific skill novelty improves and it matters a lot for leadership. It's called cognitive flexibility. According to research published through the American Psychological Association, exposure to novel experiences significantly improves cognitive flexibility, which in plain language means trying new things helps you get unstuck.
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara found that people who regularly engage in new and challenging experiences score higher on divergent thinking tests.
Now, divergent thinking is the kind of thinking required for creativity and innovation.
So trying new things and learning new skills. It's not just about being artistic or whimsical, which those things aren't bad and I love the, that part of it. But it's about learning and even training and growing your brain to not default to the same answer every time. A challenge comes up because most leadership challenges are not intelligence problems.
Leaders are intelligent They are perspective problems. Novelty new things, trains your brain to look for options instead of certainty. And this happens when you're learning a new skill, especially one you're not good at, but even travel expands thinking.
[00:10:02] Autopilot, Grocery Stores, and Environment Shifts
You've probably felt this before. You go on a trip and you feel more alive, you feel more awake, more connected to yourself and maybe even the people around you.
I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've talked with people who go to a new country, maybe in, you know, south America or Europe for the first time and come back saying things like, Ugh, they just do things better. Or when I've taken people over on trips to Africa and I hear the people are so incredibly nice.
Are things better in other countries? Are people nicer in other cultures? I mean, honestly, maybe. But more often what is really happening is that our subconscious is more awake in those settings because everything is different. We're paying attention again because we have to pay attention. Very little is familiar in those environments.
Many years ago, I was working with a friend from Proctor and Gamble, and he told me about research they had done on grocery shopping behavior.
What they found is that when people shop in a familiar store, they often slip into a semi subconscious state. So when you walk into a familiar grocery store, your heart rate actually drops a little bit. Your breathing slows a little bit. You end up taking the same route you always take, you actually relax in the familiar you go to produce, then you go to bread, milk, meat, eggs, and then you're out.
When you are in a familiar and safe environment, you tend to make familiar and safe choices from your subconscious.
The same thing happens when you drive a familiar route that maybe you take every day. Have you ever driven from work to home and you meant to stop at the grocery store, the bank along the way, and then suddenly you're like in your driveway and barely remember the drive. Almost like you just, you know, like woke up like you were sleeping the whole time. That's not carelessness. That is autopilot. Familiar settings, familiar routes, familiar activities, lead to subconscious, familiar choices.
And what Procter and Gamble discovered is that when they changed the environment in the store, specifically when people came into the store, people woke up.
So if they changed the front of the store to highlight different products or tied a display to something timely, like snacks for the Olympics, people notice. They actually came out of their subconscious state. They became more conscious. And they were awake to be able to make different choices. So they actually ended up making different buying decisions for Proctor and Gamble.
They bought more because they remembered they needed more than just the basics. So they picked up a dessert. They remembered they needed paper towels, changing the environment changed the choices.
[00:13:11] Travel, Perspective, and Bigger Worlds
When I was 18, I decided to leave the country every year. I made a commitment to myself, and I've actually been able to do that every year besides 2020 during the pandemic.
The reason I decided to make this commitment is because I felt more alive when I traveled and I also wanted to keep my world.
Big because I knew that if I had what felt like big problems and my world was small, my problems were my whole world, but if I kept my world big, the problems were still there. They just didn't take up my whole world. I was able to keep them in perspective. And so leaving the country every year has never really been about like checking off boxes for me or going to that next country to cross off my list.
It's always been about keeping my world big and my assumptions about the world kind of loose. And research from Columbia Business School shows that people who spend extended time abroad demonstrate higher creativity and stronger complex problem solving skills.
Another study conducted through INSEAD, which is an international business school, found that cross-cultural experiences increase tolerance for ambiguity. So this matters because leadership can have a lot of ambiguity. Travel forces your brain to wake up. It forces it to work harder. You can't rely on autopilot.
You have to observe, interpret, and adapt, and that changes how you lead outside of that space.
[00:14:53] The Strategic Power of Creative Hobbies
When things are unclear, it actually changes how your brain works. So experiencing new hobbies. Learning new things and traveling outside your everyday environment literally makes your brain better. You become a pro, a stronger problem solver, more creative, more flexible, more alive in your work and leadership.
These things literally improve the way you approach every area of business, leadership, and life. So let's talk about what you might actually do with this. Let's talk about creative hobbies for a moment, but I wanna shift this from just something that I do to something that you might try. Because here's the thing, learning stained glass did not make me a better marketer. Curling did not make me a better strategist, but they changed how my brain approaches problems.
According to research by the National Endowment of the Arts, engaging in creative activities improves executive function, including planning, focus, and adaptive problem solving, creative hobbies, learning new ones, train you to try without knowing the outcome, fail without panic, adjust instead of quit and stay curious longer.
That's leadership training. But here's the important part, this does not work if you turn it into another performance metric. This is not about picking the thing you think you should be good at. It is about picking something. You give yourself permission to be a beginner.
[00:16:36] How to Practice Beginnerhood
So if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, but what does that actually look like for me?
Here are a few simple ways to approach it. First, choose something that uses a different part of your brain than your day job. So if you spend all day in strategy, try something physical. If you spend all day in meetings, try something tactile or creative. If your work is abstract, try something concrete.
Second, keep the stakes intentionally low. No classes that end in certification. No side hustle, no monetizing, just learning.
Third, give it a time boundary. A week, a month, a season, a year, you're not committing to a new identity. You are committed to being curious for a little while.
And finally, what I want you to do with all that is notice when things change, not about how good you get, but notice your patience. Notice how you respond when things don't work outside of that moment. Notice how willing you are to experiment elsewhere. This is where the real return shows up.
And now for travel.
Travel works the same way and I wanna name this clearly because I know not everybody can hop on a plane tomorrow. I get that and I can't do that. You know, part of why I could leave the country every year, even when I was young and broke, was because I lived in San Diego and I lived in the Northwest.
So driving to Mexico or Canada was very easy. I mean, literally in San Diego I could do it over lunch if I wanted. So that was part of my experience is literally just driving over the border. But what you need to understand is travel is not about distance, it is about disruption. You don't need a passport stamp for your brain to wake up.
What matters is putting yourself in environments where you cannot run on autopilot. That might be leaving the country, but it also might be traveling to a place that challenges your assumptions. Eating food you do not normally eat. Spending time with people whose lives look very different from yours.
And this is a key one for people in business, holding team meetings offsite. When you actually leave your office and go to a new environment, your team, their brain wakes up and become more creative, better problem solvers. The goal is not to escape. The goal is to change perspective. When your environment changes, your thinking changes.
When your thinking changes, your leadership follows. So if travel is accessible to you, lean into it. If it's not right now, look for other ways to make your world bigger anyway. Trying new things and going new places is not about becoming more interesting, although that could be a very fun byproduct. It is about staying mentally alive.
When leaders stop trying new things, their thinking gets smaller, even if their responsibilities get bigger. So here's the invitation. Pick one thing this year that puts you back in beginner mode, whether that's a skill, a place, a creative outlet, not to master it, not to monetize it, just to stretch your thinking, because sometimes the most strategic thing you can do is fall on the ice, laugh and get back up again, and sometimes you still win.
[00:20:11] Permission to Try Something New
Let me leave you with this. May you give yourself permission to be new at something. Again, may you choose curiosity over control when the outcome is unclear, may you remember that growth does not always look productive in the moment. And may you lead with a mind that stays flexible, a heart that stays open, and a world that stays big.
And may you never underestimate the quiet power of trying something new. Because we believe you can be both ambitious and kind, fun and driven, powerful and deeply human. Your leadership can inspire your success, can have soul, and your ambition can make space for everyone. That's why you are a badass softie.
We'll see you next week.