Hello friends, and welcome to 2020. Our team is back today after a good, well-deserved vacation. Vacations are always a great time to forget about work for a while, and to pause, breathe, and reflect. I did plenty of that over the last several days.
And after a period like that, I always like to ask myself, “What am I going to do differently, or better, when I get back to the grind?” Sometimes I don’t come up with much, sometimes something modest, and sometimes something significant. But regardless, I try to come up with something.
But that is the easy part. The harder part is what to do with that something. How to put it into play. How to execute. Here are a few things I do to help make my attempts at self-improvement stick. It doesn’t always work, but my chances for success go up if I do a few specific things:
- Articulate the change. Just thinking about it isn’t enough. Verbalize it. Once you say it out loud, it becomes more real.
- Write down the change. I keep a little notebook of ideas that I carry with me all the time. The act of writing something down makes it even MORE real. It also gives you something to refer back to. Sometimes, if it is a change I am willing to make public, I might even write it on the big whiteboard in my office.
- Tell someone about it. Pick an “accountability partner” and let them know what you are planning for yourself. You have to pick someone you trust, someone who will treat the knowledge and your vulnerability with care. But articulating your desired self-improvement to an accountability partner will dramatically increase the chances for success.
We will get back to some more specific communication concepts starting next week. But today, I want to get you thinking about what you want and need to be better at this year, and how you can increase your chances for success.
Good luck, happy new year, and we look forward to leaning into our dialogue with all our clients and friends in this new year and this new decade.
Have a great day.
Does your team:
– Take too long to make decision?
– Fail to ask for what it wants or needs from you?
– Make things too complicated?
– Deliver unconvincing or disorganized presentations?
– Have new hires who are unprepared to communicate in the workplace?
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