Growth vs. Progress: Why the Words Matter More Than We Realize

We throw words around.

We hear them in keynotes, read them in self-help books, and toss them into conversations as if we all agree on what they mean: growth, progress, success, achievement.
But we don’t. Not really.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with the difference between growth and progress. The distinction came into sharp focus in a conversation with another veteran – a high-performance, high-potential guy who hit the upper limits of achievement in service. We were trading thoughts on what it really means to move forward.

And it hit me:

Progress isn’t growth. And growth isn’t progress.

At first glance, they feel interchangeable. But when you pull the thread – when you examine the roots, the origin, the experience – they unravel into entirely different things.

Progress Is Linear

The Latin root of progress is progressus meaning “an advance.”
From pro- (forward) and gradi (to walk).
It’s literally about walking forward.

Progress implies motion along a track. A movement toward a defined objective. A target.

It’s often confined to a single domain: career advancement, skill acquisition, job performance, and financial milestones.

And here’s the thing: progress is singularly dimensional—you can progress in one area while staying completely stagnant in others.

It’s also metric-friendly. We love progress because we can measure it. Promotions. Revenue. Awards. Checkboxes. Completion. But here’s the trap: Not all progress leads to growth. And not all growth creates progress.

Growth Is Dimensional

Growth, from the Latin crescere, means “to increase.”
But it’s not about forward motion – growth doesn’t care about finish lines.

Growth is about expansion – of capacity, of depth, of understanding, of self.
I think of it like ivy or kudzu – growing in every direction, wild and uncontained – multi-dimensional.

You can grow deeply without progressing visibly.
You can become more compassionate after failure.
You can gain wisdom from a mistake.
You can emerge from stillness more powerful than before.

And none of that would show up on a résumé.

Growth often happens in silence. Progress often gets the spotlight.

Success vs. Achievement: A Similar Tension

This isn’t a new idea for me.
I’ve long made a distinction between success and achievement.

Achievement is about completion. It comes from the Latin phrase ad caput (venire)—“to come to a head.” To bring something to its end. You did the thing. You reached the milestone. You won the award.

But success?
That’s different.

Success comes from successus, rooted in succedere meaning “to come close after.”
It’s about gaining something you didn’t previously have.
Insight. Clarity. Grit. Perspective. Peace.

Sometimes, failure is success because it gave you something that no achievement ever could.
And sometimes, achievement is hollow because it didn’t change you.

Why This Distinction Matters

We live in a world obsessed with optics and output.
We count steps instead of direction.
We measure accomplishments instead of transformation.

But here’s what I believe:

You can progress and remain small.
You can grow and appear stagnant.
You can move forward without becoming more.

During my time in the military, progress was built into the system: another training, another rank, another box to check.

But growth? That came in the quiet. After loss. In stillness. In the conversations no one saw.

Growth isn’t always visible. Progress isn’t always meaningful.

A New Model for Transformation

So what?  How do we take this idea and make it actionable, meaningful beyond semantics?

It’s about using these terms for self-awareness.

• Progress is linear. It’s a path. It moves toward a target.
• Growth is dimensional. It expands in all directions. It changes who you are.

One is a finish line.
The other is a deeper becoming.

Don’t confuse the path for the change.
Don’t mistake movement for meaning.
Don’t assume performance is the same as transformation.

Let’s Give Our Words Back Their Meaning

Words carry legacy.
They have roots.
And when we understand their origins, we reclaim their clarity, and move closer to understanding ourselves and how we think, and closer to understanding others with a shared language.

• Progressus: to walk forward
• Crescere: to grow, to increase
• Successus: to gain something that follows
• Ad caput: to come to a head, to conclude

It’s all there. Etched in the language.
The insight was never hidden – we’ve just stopped listening to what the words have always tried to tell us.

So next time you feel stuck, ask yourself:

• Am I progressing?
• Or am I growing?

One isn’t better than the other. But they are not the same.
And that difference might change how you move next, or how you help someone else.

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JC Glick serves as the Chief Executive Officer of The COMMIT Foundation. JC brings with him a wealth of experience as a leadership consultant and career Army officer and is driven by a deep commitment to supporting veterans in their transition journey. Since transitioning from 20 years of military service in 2015, JC has been a founder and partner of two leadership companies, where his clients included Fortune 500 companies, international non-profit organizations, government agencies, the NFL, numerous NFL and NBA teams, and multiple NCAA programs.

Over the course of his Army career, JC spent over seven years in the Ranger regiment, serving in two Ranger Battalions as well as Regimental Headquarters, participating in the Best Ranger Competition twice, and has over seven and a half years of command time with 11 operational and combat deployments to Haiti, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Afghanistan. JC is the author of two books, including A Light in the Darkness: Leadership Development for the Unknown. In 2017, he was selected as a TEDX Speaker and delivered Rethinking Leadership at TEDX Hammond. JC is also an adjunct professor at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. He holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Rhode Island and is a Liberty Fellow, part of the Aspen Institute.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.