Getting worse might be the best sign you've got

In June, I paid a tennis coach in Croatia to make me worse at tennis.

I was there on a family holiday and hired a coach for a few sessions, to stay in shape. I hit a handful of balls. Coach Sunčica stopped me.

"It seems that you are holding your racquet wrong."

I've always appreciated Balkan directness :)

She moved my hand about two centimetres around the grip. That was it.

The racquet that had felt like an extension of my arm for years suddenly felt like a foreign object. I couldn't get the ball over the net. I was frustrated.

Sunčica told me that if I didn't change the grip, I would probably never get much better. But after watching me struggle for a few days, she also gave me a way out.

This is a big change, she said. It will mess up your game for a while. You're playing for fun. You don't have to put yourself through this. You can keep the old grip.

I was tempted. The old grip was comfortable, familiar, mine.

But I was intrigued by the promise of the "next level." And I had seen this before in my basketball career: sometimes you have to temporarily get worse to become permanently better.

So I kept the new grip.

June was bad. July was bad. Most of August was bad. A lot of practice. A lot of sucking.

Then, about two weeks ago, something clicked.

I'm now playing the best tennis of my life. The new grip feels natural. And when I try the old one, it feels strange and wrong.

Three lessons to find the problem. Three months to change the habit.

And somewhere in those three months is a lesson that has very little to do with tennis 👇

Your performance is not your progress

We assume that getting better at something should feel like getting better.

Often it doesn't.

Research from UCLA found that the conditions that make you perform well during practice often produce the weakest long-term learning. And the conditions that make practice harder, and temporarily hurt your performance, often produce the strongest. The researchers call these "desirable difficulties."

In other words: your performance today and your progress over time are not the same thing.

My old grip was automatic. My brain didn't have to think about it anymore. Changing it meant making conscious something that had been unconscious for years. Suddenly I had to think about something that used to be free.

Of course I got worse.

The mistake would have been reading that drop in performance as proof that the change wasn't working.

Real change, and every big transition, feels like failure before it feels like progress.

As I always do, I immediately saw a leadership lesson in the experience!

The dangerous moment isn't the beginning

Maybe you're starting something new this autumn. A new role. A new team. A new habit. A course. A different way of running meetings. Delegating more. Talking less. Asking better questions. Having the difficult conversation instead of avoiding it.

At the beginning, you have energy.

The dangerous moment comes a few weeks later.

The meeting you used to run on instinct suddenly requires preparation. You ask a question instead of giving the answer, and the room stays quiet longer than feels comfortable. You delegate something and get it back at 70% of what you would have done yourself. You stop being the person who always knows and start practising being the person who helps others think.

That is when the old grip starts calling you back. And the exit usually sounds very reasonable:

I'm not a natural delegator.

This approach doesn't fit my personality.

My team just needs more direction.

I tried it. It didn't work.

Nobody orders us to stop changing. We give ourselves permission to go back to what's familiar at exactly the moment when the unfamiliar feels worst.

The discomfort is real. The mistake is what we decide it means.

The voice in your head is not a coach

There is a famous tennis book that is really a book about this exact moment: The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey.

His idea is simple. Every player has two selves. One is the body that actually learns, mostly by feel and repetition. The other is the commentator in your head. The commentator judges every shot: That was terrible. You're getting worse. This isn't working.

Gallwey's finding, from years of coaching, was that the commentator doesn't help you learn. It gets in the way. The tighter you grip, the harder you try, the more you judge, the worse you play.

During my bad July, the commentator was loud. You were better before. Go back.

The same voice shows up at work. You run the meeting the new way, it goes badly, and the commentator has a verdict before you've left the room.

Gallwey's advice was to replace judgement with observation. Don't say that was a bad shot. Say the ball went long. One is a verdict on you. The other is information you can use.

So when the new behaviour goes badly this week, try describing it instead of grading it. Not I'm bad at delegating. But the work came back at 70%, and I hadn't told them what "done" looks like.

That sentence you can act on.

But sometimes it really is a mistake

"Never give up" sounds inspiring, but it's terrible advice if you're going in the wrong direction.

Sometimes getting worse means you are learning. Sometimes it means the change isn't working. So before you quit, or stubbornly keep going, ask three questions.

1. What exactly are you changing, and why should it work?

Name the behaviour, not the ambition. "Become a better manager" is useless. "In every team meeting, I will ask for two views before giving mine" is something you can test.

Then finish this sentence: "I believe this will help because…"

For my tennis grip: I'm moving my hand around the racquet so I can get a better angle on the ball and generate more control and spin. Sunčica could explain the mechanism. I wasn't just suffering and hoping.

If you cannot explain how the change is supposed to produce the result, don't push harder. Get advice or change the experiment.

2. What should improve first, before the final result improves?

Don't wait only for the big result. Decide what early evidence would tell you the change is taking hold.

With tennis, winning matches came last. Earlier signs came first: the new grip needed less conscious thought, the old grip started feeling wrong, certain shots became easier.

The same is true at work. If you are learning to delegate, the final result might be "my team operates without me." But earlier signs could be that people make more decisions on their own, fewer questions come back to you, or the delegated work comes back at 75% instead of 60%.

Ask yourself: Even if the final result is still bad, what should be getting slightly better?

If nothing is changing underneath the result after enough repetitions, don't call that perseverance. Change something.

3. When will you review it, and what will make you continue, adjust, or stop?

This may be the most important question, because it stops you from deciding in the middle of frustration.

Set a review date before you start. Then decide what each of three outcomes would mean:

Continue: I'm seeing enough early evidence that the change is taking hold.

Adjust: Something is improving, but the method needs to change.

Stop: After enough attempts, feedback and time, I see no meaningful movement.

For example: I'll try this new way of running meetings for six weeks. If more people are contributing and making decisions without me, I continue. If participation improves but decisions don't, I adjust. If nothing changes after six weeks and I've asked for feedback, I stop and try something else.

That gives you something much more useful than "never give up."

Don't ask only, "Should I keep going?" Ask: "What evidence would tell me to keep going?"

The adventure of the week

Pick one thing you started this September. Just one. Keep the old grip on the rest until November.

Not sure which one matters most? Take the assessment. It takes a few minutes and shows you where you're weakest right now. Start there.

Write three lines about it:

• The change: one thing you'll do, that someone could see you doing

• The dip I expect: what worse will look like

• Review date: a date when you will check in on progress

Mine, for saying no to work on fewer projects:

• The change: Every new request gets "let me come back to you" instead of a yes in the room.

• The dip I expect: People will be disappointed. Twice I'll want to say yes just to end the conversation.

• Review date: 16 November (it's in my calendar).

Leaving behind something that served you well so far is hard. It's a loss. But that is what it takes. If you can go through that transition with a coach (like I did) or in a cohort or with peers, the struggle will be a bit easier, and the change will come faster. It's always better NOT to do these things alone.

Until next time, keep evolving ✊