Meet Luke Hobson

This month our focus in our e-news, “IMPACT” is all around growth mind-set. We thought it would be interesting to hear from one of our newer facilitators and team members, Luke Hobson, about his perspective on mindset and growth. Enjoy our interview:

What does growth look like to you?

When I think about growth, I think about becoming closer to the idealized version of yourself or your organization.  Growth should ideally lead to positive and practical outcomes.  

When I was growing up, it was instilled in me that attitude is everything.  Attitude drives outcomes.  I now think of this in terms of mindset.  I have found that having a fixed mindset is often what comes naturally.  Having a growth mindset as the default is something that requires practice, but it is certainly worth the effort.  

When it comes to your personal life, in what way do you believe yourself to have grown most?

I like to believe that as I have aged, I have grown more into the person that I was always meant to be.  Earlier is my life I was a person who was primarily concerned with his own interests.  As the years have come and went,  I hope that I have grown into a heathier person who now is able to place the needs and goals of others and my family as a primary focus.

What’s one way, personally, in which you still wish to grow further?

What immediately comes to mind is the issue of procrastination.  When things are potentially challenging and possibly uncomfortable, I have a history of pushing things off to the last minute.  This is something that I need to work on in my personal life.

How have you grown professionally? How do you make sure this happens?

I believe that my vision of what I hope to achieve professionally has come into clear focus.  This has been the result of great reflection as well as experiencing different work environments and different professional positions.  I’m so happy to be with ELA because of the focus of personal and professional growth.  ELA stresses the importance of having a growth mindset into the various curriculum, and I’m incredibly proud that we as an organization are helping students get into that mindset.

Is growth linear? Why?

I don’t believe so.  Thinking that growth is linear can be a problematic mindset because there will invariably be setbacks when growing and trying to achieve goals.  If one lets these setbacks deter you from moving forward, goals and growth will not be achieved.

Again, I do believe that it comes down to mindset.  When setbacks occur, it is helpful to look back and reflect on those setbacks as growing experiences.  It came be very easy to look back at experiences that didn’t go as planned and focus on the negative components (wasted energy and resources), but for growth to occur I have found that looking all experiences as opportunities for growth is key to long lasting success.

How do you stay motivated when the growth isn’t as obvious?

Keeping perspective that growth is a mindset is crucial to staying motivated.  Even when we don’t see immediate impact, we must understand that growth is a long-life process.  It’s all about moving forward and growing through the successes and failures that we meet along the way.