Taking Stock and Reflecting on the Year: An Annual Ritual
In the consulting business, it’s common practice to facilitate “end of year account reviews” with our key accounts. During these meetings we discuss accomplishments of the past year, things that didn’t go as well, and our client’s strategic goals, initiatives, and leadership strategies for the new year. These meetings are one way to “mark the moment” as we say.
As professionals, we need to do the same thing for ourselves. These end of year (EOY) milestones are a great opportunity to zoom out and take stock of the year. These EOY reviews can provoke reflections and spark planning as we look to the new year.
So here is what we recommend:
- Take a Look Back: Identify what you accomplished this past year that was significant and/or memorable. These could be goals you achieved (personal and professional), experiences you’ve had, milestones you’ve reached, special memories you’ve created. Write 15-20 of these accomplishments as a memo in your phone, or in your journal.
- Identify Your Energy Generators and Degenerators: Make a list of the 10 things that generated the most energy for you, and then list the 10 things that drained energy from you. These could be tasks, goals, people, activities, etc.
- Recognize Your Inner Circle: Identify up to five (5) people who were part of your inner circle this past year and reflect on how they’ve impacted you positively. As we approach the year-end, think of some ways you can express your appreciation – and then do those things before 12/31.
- Reflect on Lessons Learned: Reflect on what you’ve learned this past year and select one of your biggest lessons learned. Write that lesson down and provide some explanations as to why that had an impact on you. Think about how you want to take that learning into the new year.
- Plan for 2025: And lastly, what can you do to prepare for the new year? List the change you want to create for the year ahead. What personal and professional goals will you develop? Who will you surround yourself with? What do you want to be able to say about 2025 at the end of next year? We recommend you do this exercise during the last two weeks of December. Don’t wait until the new year! Be proactive and planful.
To all of you reading this post, thank you for a great 2024 and we wish you continued success into the new year!
Webcast Recording: Leader to Leader Webcast Series featuring John O’Leary
Last week, I was fortunate to host John O’Leary as my guest on our Leader to Leader webcast series. I was reminded that we all have a lot more agency to create a more fulfilling life than we think we do. I am well aware that I fall “below the line” more frequently than I’d like to admit. My challenge is to remember that I have a choice every day on how I’m going to show up with myself and with others. We all know this to be true, but it’s important to remind ourselves.
If you missed the live event, check out the recording below. The recording is 59 minutes and worth the investment of your time. If you’d like to learn more about John, check out his book On Fire! or email him at [email protected].
Lastly, we are scheduling guest speakers for 2025 and are looking forward to an interesting new year. If you have a speaker you would like me to interview or a leadership related topic to explore, please email me at [email protected].
To your success,
Recording of L2L Webinar with Sam Reese, CEO of Vistage Worldwide
At the end of August, I was joined by Sam Reese, CEO of Vistage Worldwide for a discussion on where leadership is going and what great leaders are doing to inspire action and engagement.
Following are my key takeaways from our discussion.
- Develop your people and then work hard to keep them. Sam was given advice early in his career that as leaders our primary job is to develop others so that they become so capable and talented that your competition wants to recruit them away. Then we have to work hard to keep them by creating the environments where they can continue to grow and develop into better versions of themselves.
- Lead with vision, mission and purpose while keeping “purpose” out front and center every day. Purpose, or why we do what we do, drives engagement and helps people connect their contributions to the bigger agenda. Sam shared an example of keeping purpose out front. To this day he starts his team meetings by asking his team members to share a story of how they helped their customers.
- Embrace ambiguity and uncertainty. It’s easy to get pulled away from our vision when we think it’s our job to remove all ambiguity. Things are changing so quickly that we need to be okay with not knowing all the answers. What we thought was the right answer or course of action yesterday may be the wrong answer today.
- Command and control leadership is dead. People don’t want to be led by leaders who direct and control things. We need to hear from our team members and learn to listen intently. We also need to put our egos aside and avoid driving our own agendas.
- Lead with the right question rather than the right answer. Many of us have been promoted because we know the right answers. As we take on bigger roles, we can’t know everything so we have to ask more than tell and rely more heavily on those who are closest to the action.
- Practice vulnerability and transparency. Vulnerability can be seen as weak, even risky when leaders are with other leaders or in a competitive situation. When we don’t open up as to what’s really going on we invite others to do the same; and when we create cultures where it’s not safe to address the real issues, that’s when you need to worry.
- Hold people accountable and jump into the details when needed.One way to hold people accountable is to have regularly scheduled weekly 1:1 meetings with each of your team members. Sam recommends we start our 1:1 meetings with these 3 simple questions, “What’s going well?” “What’s not going well?” and “Where do you need my help?”
Check out the full interview by clicking the video below.
Webinar: “Accelerating the Creation of a Combat Ready Team”
You’re invited to join us for our first “Leader to Leader” Webinar of 2024 where we invite leaders from a variety of contexts to share leadership best practices with our community of leaders.
Next month we will have a discussion on how to build high performing teams with Colonel Jason “Stinger” Houston, of the USAF. During this webinar, Col Houston will share how he assembled a new squadron of 60 “top gun” aviators within six weeks of deployment to the Middle East. What were his team development priorities, who were the key players, and how did he ultimately create a high-performing combat ready team in record time?
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
9:00 AM to 10:00 AM (MT); 11:00 AM to Noon (ET)
April, 2019 – A Team Development Case Study
“I took command of the 336th Fighter squadron in late April 2019. When I accepted this responsibility, the squadron culture was that of low trust, unhealthy divisions within the aircrew, and diminishing morale and standards. My first priority was to work on the morale and culture of the squadron to rebuild trust and get buy-in. My ultimate goal was to create a high-functioning, highly connected team that would be ready for a combat deployment a year later.
Within three weeks of taking command the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East had changed dramatically. Tensions with Iran had reached a boiling point when oil tankers were being attached in the Strait of Hormuz. Within six weeks of taking command, our squadron was Presidentially directed to deploy to combat, a year ahead of schedule, and my long-term strategy of rebuilding the culture of the squadron was overcome by a new series of events.
Before I knew it, I was leading 60 personnel (aviators and enlisted) and a squadron of F-15Es to the United Arab Emirates for an undetermined amount of time. We would spend the next six months not only deterring Iran but conducting simultaneous operations in three areas of responsibility: the Arabian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq and Syria (Operation Freedom Sentinel and Operation Inherent Resolve).”
Charting Your Development Journey
Hopefully by now the confetti of the new year has settled, and you are back into a routine and focusing on your key priorities for the new year. As a culture we are good at defining KPIs, financial metrics, and organizational goals. What we are not as good at is creating goals that support our leadership development.
In our leadership programs, we challenge leaders to think about their context which could include a new position, being part of a new team, or just having a higher level of presence and influence. Based on evaluating that context, we encourage leaders to reflect on what leadership skills they want to develop. At StarQuest, we use the Leadership Circle™ competency model as a reference tool to help leaders identify whether they want to focus skills more on people/relationship skills or results/task skills. This decision is often informed by doing a 360 assessment to gain insights into the areas that are most important.
We also encourage leaders to meet with their managers to discuss what they want to grow and develop and to ask what their manager considers to be important. Once a competency area is defined, the development planning begins.
A very effective framework we use is colloquially known as the “One Big Thing” (OBT) structure. I first became acquainted with the OBT structure in Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s book, Immunity to Change. Our clients found the structure and language to be very effective. What is one development skill that you are committed to improving, and what behaviors do you want to stop doing and what do you want to start doing. The framework is simple, and yet very effective in helping leaders have development conversations.
For those of you who want to put more structure and discipline around your development efforts and/or those of your team members, please download our professional development plan. We outline the OBT process and connect it to what matters most to you.
If you have any questions, please email your questions to [email protected]. If you are interested in our leadership development and coaching solutions, email us at [email protected].