Leadership can be hard. Avoiding that discomfort is also hard. And the great thing is: you get to choose your hard.
“Type 2 Fun” is that curious category of experiences that are miserable in the moment but rewarding in hindsight. And Type 2 Fun turns out to be more than just a clever label used by the adventurous sorts among us.
Research on resilience, experiential learning, and leadership development reveals something interesting: our capacity to lead through complexity grows directly from how we engage with voluntary discomfort.
When we choose difficult experiences that are bounded, purposeful, and followed by reflection, we’re training our nervous systems to tolerate uncertainty, strengthening our identity as people who can handle hard things, and expanding our adaptive capacity.
This is something my friends and I have been talking about ever since one of us (the fabulous Melissa) took on a major Type 2 Fun expedition over the Christmas break: The Great Ocean Walk in Victoria, Australia.
The Great Ocean Walk stretches roughly 110 kilometres along Victoria’s southwest coast, from Apollo Bay to the Twelve Apostles. It takes most people 6–8 days (my friend Melissa did it in five!). You carry what you need. The terrain shifts constantly between beach walking, soft sand, forest tracks through the Otways, exposed cliff tops, and long steady climbs, with wind that changes personality often and without warning.
It is not comfortable. And that is precisely the point. On paper, it’s a scenic coastal walk. In practice, it is a masterclass in Type 2 Fun.
There are times when your shoulders ache from the pack, your calves burn on the inclines, and you question why you thought this was a good idea and what the hell all the training was for if it’s still this hard! But there are also those magic moments like cresting a headland, rounding a bend to see empty coastline stretching far in front of you, or sitting comparing notes with other walkers at the end of the day.
Research shows that people who experience structured challenges like this, and plenty of smaller and simpler ones too, demonstrate about 25% greater effectiveness in decision-making under pressure than those trained solely in formal learning settings.
These experiences help us understand that resilience grows from cycles of stress and recovery, not from perpetual comfort or unrelenting grind. The key is making the challenge voluntary, time-limited, and accompanied by psychological safety and structured reflection.
A question for you to reflect on: Where in your leadership right now are you choosing comfort that’s keeping you small, rather than choosing discomfort that will help you grow?
Three practical actions I invite you to consider:
- Design one Type 2 Fun experience this quarter: Make it something voluntary, bounded, and outside your competence/comfort zone – either at work or somewhere in else in your life.
- Build reflection rituals: After any high-pressure experience, ask yourself: What happened? How did I respond? What did I learn? What will I do differently?
- Make it social: Shared challenge builds both resilience and connection. Recruit some adventure companions or find a group who are into the thing you want to do.
Whether in life or leadership, hard is easier when we do it together.
