Welcome to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years, ensuring that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy.
This episode is meant to inspire you to dream into your vision for 2023. We want to inspire you to really think differently about the way you’re approaching your job, your parenting or family life, or community activities. It starts with understanding your values. What are the things that you value in life? What are the ways that you’re living your life so that these values are seen and heard? We want to give our listeners inspiration to really dream into their vision for this year and beyond.
If nothing else from this episode, we invite you to join us on the journey so that together we can say we are going to make 2023 the best year ever. We are going to stumble and fall and get back up and continue to push the ball forward.
Dream into 2023
The beginning of the year is a great time to start thinking about goals, habits, or things you want to accomplish in the next year. As you’re doing that, rather than putting down some arbitrary goal or number, think about what you’re trying to do in the world.
A very significant and powerful way to do this is by creating a vision and evaluating your values. Your values indicate what drives you, how you make decisions, and how you can move forward. Reevaluate what your values are and ask yourself if those things still hold true for you.
Three Steps for Creating Vision with Values
Every once in a while when you’re anticipating a transition, we encourage you to look back and then look forward. Look at where you were and where you want to go. And in the middle of that, try to figure out where you are now.
Our invitation for you is to dream into your vision for the next year. What are your values and how do you live them out? Who are you and what is your purpose? What are your goals for this year? Use the following three steps to get started.
1. Detect Your Current Values
Focus on detecting your current values. Try not to be driven by the values of the past. At Leadership Vision, we knew we were beginning to change and that there was a different landscape. We started to ask ourselves who our clients are and who is working with us and why?
2. Get Clear on Who You Are
Get clear about who you are, what you offer, your purpose, and why you’re unique. For us, we know that Leadership Vision is more than just Strengths and we wanted to wrestle with what our niche was. Why do people come to us? What were the common threads?
3. Reorganize Around Your Values
Once you understand your values and purpose, start to organize around those things. What are the non-negotiables? What are your fundamentals to being a thriving human, as a participant in society, as a family member, and as a loved one? What does that look like?
Tips for Creating Vision
Don’t overcomplicate it. There are times when we’ve all overcomplicated our lives, our businesses, and our work. Seeking clarity around the three objectives above allowed us to practice the fundamentals.
Consider your habits. A practice or a habit is the fundamental building block of what you want to actually accomplish and who you want to be. They demonstrate how you want to grow, develop, change, and make an impact on the world. If you’re struggling to identify your values, start with your habits. What habits do you keep? How would you like them to grow or change?
Sometimes you need a thought partner. Share your values with a friend. Find someone who really understands what you find important and share your thoughts with them. Take that risk to really discover what other values you might have.
Connect with Us!
If you have questions about this episode or any of our other resources we’d love to hear from you. Email me at nathan@leadershipvisionconsulting.com.
About The Leadership Vision Podcast
The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in the discovery, practice, and implementation of a strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. We believe that knowing your Strengths is only the beginning. Our highest potential exists in the ongoing exploration of our talents.
Please contact us if you have ANY questions about anything you heard in this episode or if you’d like to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.
If you’d like to be featured on the Leadership Vision Podcast, let us know how you are using Strengths and what impact it has made. Contact us here!
Welcome to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years, ensuring that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy.
This episode is a bit of a look back to look forward. In 2023, Leadership Vision is going to be shifting and getting more clear about what we do, what we offer to our clients, and how we help people understand and express their beauty and their brilliance. We had a whole episode mapped out about our new direction when we realized that we should pause and take a moment to reflect back on how we got to this point. In doing that, we came up with three questions for you to consider as you think about what your contributions are to your team. The first question is what stands out about this past year? How have you grown in the past year and what contributions have you made?
This is the first episode in a four-part series on what is new and what is changing with Leadership Vision. In the next few episodes, we’ll discuss the direction Leadership Vision is taking and the process behind that direction. We think you’ll find some really actionable and valuable tips and resources for all kinds of leaders as you’re envisioning what you want your year to look like. Enjoy!
What’s New at Leadership Vision?
What we’ve been working on lately has been really identifying the direction and the changes at Leadership Vision in 2023. In this work, we have recognized that there are significant changes to who we are and to what we’re doing.
We thought, wouldn’t it be helpful if people got a chance to know what our journey was like; how did we get here? What was happening in 2022 that introduced us to this idea of what is next for the company? And then looking ahead into 2023, what are some of the things we’re expecting to happen and some experiences that we’re planning? Then, really what are those changes?
Three Reflection Questions on Growth & Change
We have three questions that each of us will answer in the context of 2022 because as we mentioned, we have big things that are coming, but how did we get here? These are questions anyone can answer and we invite you to go through this same process for yourself or with your team.
1. What Stands Out?
What experiences stand out as meaningful and shaping?
Think of all the experiences and the ways that you’ve grown, and the contributions you made in 2022. What were those experiences that really stand out for you as meaningful in shaping who you are as a person, family member, and professional?
2. How Have you Grown?
How did you grow, and more specifically in what areas did you grow? How has this growth changed us?
Consider all of the different areas of your life and the ways you’ve overcome challenges or taken advantage of opportunities. What are some of the things you left aside? What are some things you’ve incorporated into who you are?
3. What Contributions have you Made?
What contributions did you make to the lives of those we love?
Who are the important people in your life? They could be family members, co-workers, friends, clients, etc. Who are the people in your life that you could humbly say, because of me their life is a little bit different than it was before?
Reflections from the Leadership Vision Team
We spent time reflecting on the questions above. Here’s what we learned about growth and change in the past year:
Linda:
I think the experience of moving from being mostly virtual to being in person really allowed me to grow in a lot of different ways. I didn’t realize how much I rely on my physicality to present or to speak, and when we’re doing that together on Zoom, I’m just sitting there and I don’t use all the energy. I don’t walk around or interact. Even being in person and hearing people speak to one another was so shaping for me. In a lot of ways, it allowed me to be who I am as a host in conversations and a facilitator with groups of people.
I was able to realize that I had grown in ways that I’ve become more responsive and less reactive. Just noticing things that I hadn’t before because in some ways they were new to me. I was noticing how many cups of coffee this person was having when they would go to the coffee bar on the side of the room during the facilitation. I think that my growth then began to shape the two of you in ways that you could rely on me or even how it began to structure different meetings, that we have.
As far as the contributions that I have made to the lives of those that I love, those that I work with, and those that I live with, I just realized in some ways where my light has been able to be shown more into the world that has allowed people to discover their own light. We had one of our participants in the Strengths Communicator Training who said, “you are keepers of the flame. You shine light and you reveal the light but you don’t steal ours. You help our light shine brighter.” And that’s the contribution I want to continue to make.
Nathan:
This was technically in 2021, but on Christmas day 2021 I had my appendix taken out. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but it hit me how precious life is and how at any time, any moment, something unexpected can come up that can totally derail your life. I started 2022 with this in mind. How do I want to be spending time? And is it worth it? Our life is so precious and every moment is so valuable. How are we spending our time?
This has really stuck with me, especially as we’re rethinking how a third of our life is spent on or at work. Is the work that we’re doing at Leadership Vision meaningful and valuable and delivering as much as it can in a post-pandemic world?
When I think about how I have grown, it’s really been about maximizing my time and maximizing the things that we’re doing for our clients. One of the contributions that I’ve made, and I’m kind of just blending all three of these questions together, is we spent some money speeding up our website. I know this is sort of basic but it has really helped as we’re delivering more content online. I think about some of the things I’ve done with my family; all my kids learned how to swim this year, and my youngest can now ride her bike. Some of the skills and life lessons that they will never forget. And how that has to do with Leadership Vision and the direction that we’re headed.
Brian:
The experiences that stand out to me when I first began to ponder this several weeks ago, I felt really frustrated with myself for not being able to identify some of these experiences that I thought I should be able to readily. I’m a mountaintop and canyon kind of guy. I have these really big experiences and these really dramatic lows and I couldn’t identify them for the past year.
The reason why is because of the one experience that does stand out for the entire year, and that is that I’ve been seeing a mindfulness and performance coach every week for the entire year of 2022 and part of 2021. This experience has been life transformational for me and I think that everything else that has happened in the last year is kind of in the background of that experience and how that affected me. There was a tremendous amount of professional growth that I experienced throughout the year in a lot of the things that we were creating, writing, and delivering.
There are a lot of personal and physical changes that I was going through as a result of the work I was doing with this coach. These two things together represented a type of growth that I haven’t experienced before. It was professional, it was personal, it was emotional, and it was spiritual. It was all these things coming together, and the level of growth that happened for me over the year was unlike any other year of my life.
So that to me is the experience and the growth and the contribution. That one is hard for me because I feel that there has been a way that I’ve been present with people that maybe availed more of myself to individuals that I was aware of. A lot of times, I wasn’t aware of this because the types of comments that we’ve been receiving back from clients have been different than they have been before.
To me, this is a reflection of a type of contribution that we are consciously attempting to make that’s different as well as this other side that I’m really not aware of, but that we’re just being received a little bit differently. I feel that that contribution really stems from being able to love and accept myself in a different way than I had before. It has impacted every other area of the way that I live my life, the experiences that are meaningful, and how I’ve been growing.
Your Reflections
Once you’ve gone through this exercise, we encourage you to share it with someone else. Sit down and share some of the things that you’re learning about yourself through this exercise. If you’re working on a team, introduce this activity to them. Give others a chance to do the reflection and share out some of the meaningful and challenging experiences, areas of growth, and contributions that they’ve had over the past year.
The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in the discovery, practice, and implementation of a strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. We believe that knowing your Strengths is only the beginning. Our highest potential exists in the ongoing exploration of our talents.
Please contact us if you have ANY questions about anything you heard in this episode or if you’d like to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.
If you’d like to be featured on the Leadership Vision Podcast, let us know how you are using Strengths and what impact it has made. Contact us here!
Welcome to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years, ensuring that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy.
We’re refining our podcast and have some really helpful and inspiring episodes lined up for you. Until then, I wanted to share something that will be helpful as you think about what you want to accomplish this year.
When we ask clients to give us an example of how they see their Strengths show up, we almost always get the same response. They ask, Where? At work? At home? With my friends on the weekend pickleball team?
While it’s certainly true that our Strengths manifest differently depending on the context, there’s probably more that’s the same than different. How we can draw from all our various life contexts to grow in self-awareness?
Self-Awareness and Strengths
Self-awareness is essential for many reasons. It helps us to know ourselves better, recognize how we show up in the world, and understand how we can contribute to an organization. Self-awareness also helps us to discern if we even want to be part of an organization in the first place! Strengths are just one tool for us to gain greater self-awareness. Thinking about how Strengths cross between different contexts can also be a helpful exercise.
Recently, I read the bookStretch by Scott Sonenshein. He’s a Rice University social scientist and the book aims to rethink what we need to succeed and how to do more with what we already have. The book identifies key ways for people and organizations to work beyond their resources to achieve higher performance. Based on in-depth research in psychology and management, Sonenshein shows how to accomplish goals, find success, and live a richer life.
How Do Your Strengths Show Up in Different Contexts?
In a chapter about mixing it up, Sonenshein details the importance of taking what you’ve learned in one area of your life and applying it to another. It reminded me of how our Strengths can show up in different contexts and what we can learn from them.
Try this brief activity to start thinking about the different contexts of your Strengths:
Pick one or more of your Strengths. If you don’t know your Strengths, just pick something you feel you’re really good at.
Pick a context.
An Example
Here’s an example from my personal set of Strengths and contexts:
One of my Strengths is Maximizer® (that’s the one where you strive for excellence above all else.) At work, I always want to deliver a 5-star experience on our website, to our clients, to my colleagues, and to everyone who interacts with Leadership Vision. At home, I want to deliver that same 5-star experience to my family, be it through a family dinner, an afternoon outing, or a big vacation.
I also have the Strength of Adaptability®. What I’ve come to realize is that I tend to deliver those 5-start experiences not from sitting down and writing out a perfect plan, but from having an idea of a plan (I also have the Strength of Ideation®), getting started, and adapting and adjusting as I go along.
When I read Stretch, I thought about how some of my best experiences both at work and at home come from a combination of my Strengths. I wondered, how I can use that insight to create more successful outcomes more often? For example, at work, if I plan, and plan, and plan, and never actually do anything, well then nothing get done. Similarly, if I plan so much and then become rigid about executing that exact plan, I fail to notice what’s going on around me.
Your Strengths in Different Contexts
Think about how you show up in various situations and life settings. What works really well and what can you transfer over to work well in a different context? We’d love to hear your thoughts – connect with me at nathan@leadershipvisionconsulting.com.
About The Leadership Vision Podcast
The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in the discovery, practice, and implementation of a strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. We believe that knowing your Strengths is only the beginning. Our highest potential exists in the ongoing exploration of our talents.
Please contact us if you have ANY questions about anything you heard in this episode or if you’d like to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.
If you’d like to be featured on the Leadership Vision Podcast, let us know how you are using Strengths and what impact it has made. Contact us here!
Welcome to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years, ensuring that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy.
As 2022 is now over, and all the hope and optimism of 2023 is standing before us, we wanted to take a moment to pause and reflect on three of our favorite podcast episodes from the past 12 months. Today’s episode contains three snippets from longer conversations focusing on helping leaders transform how they express their beauty and brilliance.
As we charge into the new year, we imagine a place where people feel connected and a certainty of purpose emerges. We believe people are the most important focus of attention and investment. As you think about what you want to accomplish this year and maybe what your team wants to accomplish, we’d love to be one of the many resources you engage in making your goals a reality.
If you’ve been listening to our podcast for a while, consider this a refresher course on all things “self-improvement.” If you’re newer to the show, this episode is like an appetizer of larger lessons that will hopefully entice you to go back into the catalog and listen to the full episodes. We’ve included links below.
So these three brief lessons today focus on learning from our past experiences, investing in the people around us, and deepening our self-awareness in Strengths.
1. Three Lessons all Leaders Need to Hear
We’ll start this with Brian reflecting on his Boston Marathon experience and the simple yet profound lessons we can apply in the coming year. As you listen to it, think about a recent leadership challenge you’re facing and see how these three things might be applied.
2. Three ways to Solve your Team’s Most Pressing Needs
In this next episode from February, we tackled the question of what teams need to solve their most pressing challenges. Every team that has ever existed has been presented with some challenges. In fact, some people might argue that the sole purpose of a team is to tackle problems and overcome challenges. While there are many great resources for building a successful team, we think there are only three essential elements for teams to tackle problems and thrive.
In this episode, Brian and Linda discussed how compassion, courage, and connection are the key elements of building successful teams.
Our final excerpt is about Self-Awareness and growth, something we always think about as we begin the year. When you become more aware of your Strengths and how they’re showing up in your interactions with others, you’re better able to ask questions like, how am I coming across? How am I communicating in an interesting and helpful way to others? What is the work I need to do versus what is the work of others?
In this excerpt, Brian and Linda discuss three processes for leaning into this work.
The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in the discovery, practice, and implementation of a strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. We believe that knowing your Strengths is only the beginning. Our highest potential exists in the ongoing exploration of our talents. Subscribe to the Leadership Vision Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
Please contact us if you have any questions about anything you heard in this episode or if you’d like to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.
Welcome to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years, ensuring that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy.
The beginning of the year is, for many people, a time to set goals or envision what the new year will look like. Fitness or health-related pursuits often seem like the most popular things to focus on. Whatever you are thinking about for the new year, it all requires a certain level of disciplined learning and unlearning of certain behaviors. This is true of anything you want to get better at, whether parenting, podcasting, or pursuing your business goals. We need to move beyond the space we’re currently in and move into what could be an area that is a little scary.
Today’s podcast is actually a rebroadcast from 2019, where Brian and I explore and unpack this idea of becoming Leadership Lean. I was thinking about this recently and thought it would be a good opportunity to re-share Brian’s four L model of Listening, Leaning, Learning, and Leading.
This episode explores and unpacks what it takes to become Leadership Lean. We’ll share reflection questions throughout the episode for you to ponder as you consider the ways in which you need to become leadership lean this year. And just to be clear, if you’re listening at another time when it’s not the beginning of the year, this episode is still 100% applicable. You don’t need to wait until the new year to become a better leader.
We’ll be back in two weeks with new episodes, but until then, have a great holiday season!
The Four L’s of Lean Leadership
In order for us to attain new goals as leaders, we need to let go of certain practices that are no longer useful. Every time a new challenge presents itself, there are things we need to unlearn and things we need to learn in order to reach new goals. A lean leader understands that they may need to stop practicing certain behaviors and learn something new.
1. Listening – Lean Leaders need to learn how to listen. There are a lot of things we hear which could be considered noise. This could be echoes from the past of things that have worked or not worked and so there’s this discernment of listening to the right voices and to the right people. And what I am trying to practice is Who are those people in my life that have the type of voice that not that I can just hear but that resonates with what’s true and that’s two very different things.
2. Leaning – The act of leaning is to give up something you used to practice in order to gain something new that you haven’t yet done. Becoming leadership lean is this idea of asking yourself which professional practices are fueling you in ways that are not meeting the challenges ahead.
3. Learning – Learning comes from other people who are close to us that can share with us where our needs are. That we may be blind to but I also believe that we need to be super curious to learn how are we as individuals responding to the leadership challenges that are around us as professional or relational. the importance of other people influencing who we are as leaders and how reliant we are to become leadership lean. We’re reliant on other people to be informing us on what could be those best practices and behavioral changes that we need to make.
4. Leading – We lead last because we need to go through this process of being informed on what is it we’re trying to do. We need to listen to how our body is responding. We take some decisions or steps before we get to the actual leading part. we need to build into that because then that’s going to set the types of expectations that we should have and not some artificial expectation. I want to do this but our body is saying we can only do that.
Gratitude
To have gratitude is to also be a good steward of your opportunities and understand that they have been given to you for a reason and should be used wisely. You can easily overextend yourself and become trapped in a place more than you believe we deserve something that you don’t have. And that is a very dangerous place to be in.
About The Leadership Vision Podcast
The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in the discovery, practice, and implementation of a strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. We believe that knowing your Strengths is only the beginning. Our highest potential exists in the ongoing exploration of our talents. Subscribe to the Leadership Vision Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
Please contact us if you have ANY questions about anything you heard in this episode or if you’d like to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.
