A 20-year-old just won Olympic gold in figure skating.
After the win, Alysa Liu told 60 Minutes: "I love struggling, actually. It makes me feel alive."
I've been sitting with that line for a few days. Not because it's a great motivational quote - it is - but because of what it reveals about the environment she competed in.
She gave herself permission to struggle. To be bad at things she used to do automatically. To show up for months of ugly training sessions before the gold happened.
That's not a mindset. That's a culture. And it's one most leaders accidentally destroy.
What Happens When You Punish the Messy Middle
Think about how many leaders say they want their team to improve, but react to mistakes like they're performance failures.
Wrong call on the sales pitch? Embarrassment in the debrief.
New approach that didn't land? Skepticism in the next meeting.
Honest admission of struggle? Quiet note in the performance review.
None of this is intentional. But the signal lands clearly: around here, anything that isn't polished is a problem.
So people stop attempting the things they haven't mastered yet. They stick to the shots they know they can make. They protect their image instead of pursuing their potential.
Your team doesn't stop improving because they're lazy. They stop because the environment has quietly communicated that being in-process is dangerous.
Pixar's Ugly Baby
Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, built one of the most consistently excellent creative organizations in history with 14 number-one box office films in a row.
His operating principle was counterintuitive for a company obsessed with quality: every great film starts ugly.
He called new ideas "ugly babies" - awkward, unformed, vulnerable. The first version of the movie Up included a king in a castle in the clouds. Almost nothing from that draft survived. But they protected the idea long enough for it to become something.
The insight: if you punish the ugly baby stage, you never get to the masterpiece.
Pixar didn't lower its standards. Their finished products are the evidence. But they separated the standard for the process from the standard for the output. The process is allowed to be messy. The output is held to elite expectations.
Most leaders accidentally collapse those two things. They hold the process to the same standard as the output, which means any attempt that isn't already polished gets treated as a failure. And people learn fast.
The Leader's Job in the Messy Middle
I'm not saying celebrate mistakes. Sloppy for sloppy's sake isn't growth - it's just sloppy. The standard still matters.
But there's a difference between:
"That didn't work. Don't do that again."
And:
"That didn't work. What did you learn, and what's the next iteration?"
The first one teaches people to avoid risk. The second one teaches people to compete through it.
Alysa Liu came back from retirement and spent months barely able to complete a training session. She talked openly about how hard it was, how her stamina was non-existent, how she had to take breaks between jumps. And she kept showing up, because the struggle wasn't a sign she was failing. It was proof she was in the process of getting better.
She had permission to be in the process. That permission is a leadership decision.
One Ask for This Week
Before your next team meeting, ask yourself:
Does my team know the difference between "this isn't good enough" and "this isn't finished yet"?
If they can't tell the difference - if every imperfect attempt lands the same way - your most coachable people are quietly protecting their image instead of competing for their potential.
Create the permission. Name it explicitly. The messy middle isn't a detour from the standard. It's the only path to it.
The gold happens because someone loved the struggle long enough to stay in the room when nothing felt good yet.
Build the room where that's allowed.
