The Power of Flexing - How to Use Small Daily Experiments to Create Big Life-Changing Growth

A leadership and learning expert shows you how to change your behavior, develop soft skills, and achieve personal and professional growth through a series of small experiments she calls “Flexing.”  

A personnel shift at your organization puts you into a leadership role you don't feel prepared for. 

Your boss tells you that you seem aloof and unapproachable in client meetings. 

You need to win the support of the members of a local community group for a project you feel passionate about.

Addressing these diverse issues depends on improving your soft skills—such as time management, team building, communication and listening, creative thinking, and problem-solving. But this isn’t as easy as it may seem.

Sue Ashford, the chair of the Management and Organizations group at the Ross School of Business, has the solution. In this timely book, she introduces Flexing—a technique individuals, teams, and entire organizations can use to learn, grow, and develop their skills and knowledge with every new project, work assignment, and problem. Flexing empowers you to embrace any challenge and adapt to any change, yielding practical, valuable takeaways that ensure growth.

Flexing helps you move ahead when you’re confronted with a new challenge, or simply want to develop a vital skill. It’s a journey that begins with setting a flex goal—stating explicitly what you want to learn and how you want to grow. Once that flex goal is set, you then begin to run experiments, solicit feedback from peers or colleagues, and monitor and tweak your progress on the way to achieving your goal. Flexing can be tailored to each person, allowing you to reflect on your own experiences and incorporate the lessons you learn in the next project you tackle. It’s a growth mindset that will help you become the best version of yourself.

Flexing also works with teams and organizations. Ashford teaches small groups and large how to implement flexing to ensure their members are ready for new challenges. With more people moving to remote working full-time and developing new ways of collaborating in teams, this warm and practical guide will help every professional and any organization on the journey to greater effectiveness.

This practical guide provides a clear framework for continuous improvement, helping you to:

Adopt a Growth Mindset: Move beyond a fixed-skill perspective and learn to embrace challenges, run small experiments, and adapt to any change. Develop Essential Soft Skills: Master the interpersonal abilities that matter most, from team building and communication to creative thinking and problem-solving. Enhance Your Personal Effectiveness: Set clear "flex goals" to target specific areas for improvement and use a cycle of experimentation and feedback to achieve them. Improve Your Leadership Skills: Apply the Flexing technique to guide teams, turning every project and assignment into an opportunity for growth for you and your reports.