“Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.” ~Morihei Ueshiba
I’m sure you’ve read articles that focus on learning from mistakes. Before you say “Thanks, Heidi, I’ve been down this road,” I encourage you to review the topic again.
We are often told we can learn from our mistakes and that they are an essential part of our development. It’s completely true, and your mistakes can help others grow! When mentoring or coaching someone, it’s easy to only share stories where things have gone well for us. While those are important when you want to encourage people to do something similar, it’s just as beneficial to share when things have not gone well in your career and how those experiences have helped you.
During a meeting with a leader, she told me about a time she was coached for a similar struggle I was experiencing. She explained how that conversation opened her eyes and allowed her to make changes to her approach. As a result, she became more successful as a trainer. After she shared the experience, it motivated me to make necessary adjustments to improve my facilitation skills. Telling me what she went through showed me I was not the only person to struggle in this way and that I could overcome it.
As leaders, we have made mistakes. It’s part of being willing to take risks. Dede Henry shared in a Forbes Magazine article that while mistakes happen, how we respond to those mistakes is the key difference. I encourage you to check out the article and the strategies shared to change your mindset towards mistakes and failure. Some of the lessons we learn as leaders when things don’t go right have turn into key steps on our development journey. They may also be the experiences that someone needs to hear at just the right moment to redirect their path and achieve their goals.
How has sharing your mistakes with someone helped them grow? I’d love to hear your examples!
Networking is not about just connecting people. It’s about connecting people with people, people with ideas, and people with opportunities. ~Michele Jennae
An often-shared piece of professional development advice centers around networking. As an introvert-leaning ambivert, I thrive in smaller groups and one on one interactions but am not opposed to being a part of larger group settings. I love to spend time with people, but at the end of day I need time to recharge and am one who often observes and processes new situations before sharing. Because of this, the thought of networking early in my career was daunting. It was more comfortable to mingle with those I knew and not try to meet new people. Once I moved outside my comfort zone, I built relationships and introduced myself to new opportunities to grow in my career. I now have individuals I can reach out to when I need support on a project. For those I mentor, I can connect them with people for additional insight. I also have partners for future collaboration, mentors and peers to go to for guidance, and teachers of skills I’m not as experienced in.
For those of you looking to expand your network, I encourage you to take the next step. Here are some tips to help you.
If you haven’t done much networking, where can you start?
Ask your teammates to introduce you to colleagues.
Make a list of people you have met in professional settings. They might include coworkers, classmates, or other professionals. Pick two and ask if you can set up time to catch up. As you become more comfortable, reach out to more people on your list.
Does your company have resource networks you can join? This is a great opportunity to meet people with common interests. These groups will introduce you to coworkers from other areas of the organization and help you learn what other teams are doing that you may not have discovered otherwise.
Join a professional organization that aligns with your career goals and start attending meetings. Make a goal to meet at least three new people at each event you attend. Don’t forget to ask for contact information so that you can connect after the meeting!
Find connections through LinkedIn. You can start with people you already know, then start looking for contacts from common industries or organizations you have worked at.
If you have established a network, how can you take it to the next level?
Create two or three goals related to insights or opportunities you want to gain through networking. It could be a new career opportunity, professional development, brainstorming new ideas, or another professional focus.
Each month, select three or four people from your network to contact and ask to schedule time to connect to discuss a specific topic.
If you are involved in a resource network or professional organization, offer to help coordinate a networking event to help bring people together to meet others and make new connections.
I hope that these suggestions can move you in the right direction to grow your network and build some amazing business relationships. If you’d like to talk more about networking, reach out to me and I’ll be happy to chat!
The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress. ~Charles Kettering
We’ve all faced it. Someone announces a change is going to happen for your team, division or even the entire organization. Or maybe through personal reflection you’ve realized that something needs to be different in your life. When we face change, it’s not always with the most positive of reactions. While the experience may have been difficult, I’m sure some of you are able to reflect on the changes and see the growth you’ve experienced because of the transition to something new.
When I moved to my current role over nine years ago, there were changes on multiple levels. I left a team where I had gained experience and knowledge. Now I was in a leadership position where I would learn new processes, build new relationships, and implement my own changes to the team’s operating structure. As I began asking questions and giving feedback on training projects, I received some resistance. I realized I needed to explain why I was asking the questions and build trust with those I would be working with. Once I made that shift, people were more receptive to my feedback and willing to partner with me on training initiatives. Not only did I experience changes overall by joining a new team, I learned that I also needed to change my approach as a leader.
A few years later, along with the rest of the world, tremendous change came as the pandemic hit and we had to make quick adjustments to daily living. For me that meant leading my team from home, making difficult decisions to ensure my family was supported while I was working, adjusting to mask wearing and social distancing, and even increasing virtual interactions with friends and family. For others it was working on the front lines, adjusting to wearing PPE on a regular basis, dealing with fear, figuring out how to stay connected to loved ones that were isolated, and wondering how we would come out of this. Reflecting on my experience during the pandemic, here are some things that I’ve learned:
Curbside grocery pickups are a timesaver. I still take advantage of this option from time to time.
It’s ok to take a break.
Maintaining relationships is critical, even if you are an introvert.
Some people are kind. Others are not. Either way, only we can control our decision to be kind.
There’s always a way to support others.
People are more creative than they know.
Most recently, I’ve begun exploring the use of AI in my role. I will be the first to admit my skepticism towards this technology. Would it really make a difference? Would it reduce the time it took to complete tasks I had grown to dislike because they slowed up the process? At the same time, I was hearing the benefits and possibilities to do things that I was not as skilled in with the support of AI. In other words, it would help me learn new things.
The company I work for has done an amazing job preparing us to increase the use of AI in our work lives. Through learning, job aids, and hands-on activities with the encouragement to experiment, they have offered numerous ways for employees to discover how AI can become a part of daily work. I began to take some classes and started practicing the art of prompting. I learned how AI could help make some of my email messages more concise, how to create a process map using CoPilot and Excel, and discovered analytics that are beginning to reveal key metrics related to the audience that my team supports training. I am still learning how to further refine prompts and use CoPilot throughout the Microsoft Office Suite. My willingness to give AI a chance is bringing positive change and new opportunities within my work. I know that AI is not perfect, and the human touch is still necessary to ensure anything I ask AI to create is accurate and reflects the goals and message we want to portray to our internal teams and external learners.
In all these times of change, I grew. Was it easy? Absolutely not. But when I took the time to step back and look at the bigger picture, I saw that I embraced the change in many ways and gained insights I will carry with me into the future. These lessons are ones that I often reflect on to remind me that despite it all, growth is still happening and there are things we are constantly learning.
Leaders – Embracing change and not running from it is the most critical thing you can do. Remember the people following you. If they see you avoiding the change, that may influence them to do the same. If they see you leading the way through change, and you remain honest and transparent through the process, it will help your entire team transition and come out on the other side of the change a stronger and more resilient group. How will you lead yourself and others through the next change that’s on the horizon? For those that have recently gone through a change, what have you learned through that experience? Please share in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!
Yesterday, I hit a major milestone. I’ve now been on this earth for five decades. Looking back as I’ve approached this date, so much has happened that brings different kinds of memories. For the next several posts, I have decided to share what has happened in the world from a history and leadership perspective in the last 50 years as well as insights from my own life and development journey. To start, I’ll share about the first twenty years.
1976-1985
I was born the year of America’s bicentennial, so that was big news in the months following my birth. The number one song the day I was born was “Welcome Back” by John Sebastian. Fondly remembered as the theme to Welcome Back, Kotter, it was still too early to know the extent of fame that John Travolta would see in his acting career. The nation was 200 years in, with technology advancing and political conflicts continuing. Those first 10 years of my life saw me living in two cities and attending two different elementary schools. I made my first communion, learned to love reading and some math, and enjoyed many great trips with family. That time also saw the start of Apple, continued Cold War tensions that included the Soviets invading Afghanistan, advancements in space exploration with Columbia launching as the first reusable shuttle, the start of MTV (I miss the 24/7 videos), and efforts like Live Aid where musicians led the way to raise awareness and money to help countries struggling with famine.
From a leadership development perspective, some of the most popular professional focused books in that decade included James Macgregor Burns’ Leadership, which highlighted transactional and transformational leadership and The One Minute Manager, Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson’s very popular book that shared techniques to boost productivity and empower employees. Leaders during that decade included three U.S. Presidents – Ford, Carter, and Reagan; four Soviet leaders including Leonoid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev; and the beginning of Margaret Thatcher’s 11-year journey as the first female Prime Minister of the UK. I really didn’t have any specific leadership opportunities that I recall from that young age, but they would certainly emerge as I started the next decade of my life.
1986-1995
When I turned 10, we were getting closer to the end of the Cold War. Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” was the number one song on the radio, and Top Gun was the top grossing movie of 1986. The time went by quickly as I grew to love music and was involved in band, choir, and theatre during many of those years. I went on some amazing band trips which included Saint Louis, Virginia Beach, and Chicago. I sang in multiple choir concerts and competitions and had a role behind the scenes or on stage for two plays and three musicals. I also managed to visit Washington, D.C. three times in that decade. First for our eighth-grade trip, two years later on a band trip, and two years after that at a high school journalism conference. I graduated from high school during this decade of life and started my first year of college. While I did not fare well my freshman year, I gained some valuable lessons that took me to an improved academic experience at other schools in future years. Two tragedies marked the beginning of this decade with the Challenger explosion and the Chernobyl incident. There was also the controversial discovery that became known as the Iran-Contra Affair. The second decade of my life saw the fall of the Berlin Wall along with the reunification of Germany and the end of the USSR, the launch of the World Wide Web, the Gulf War, the Oklahoma City bombing, the O.J. car chase and trial, the rise of grunge music, the death of Kurt Cobain, and the beginnings of the Foo Fighters (some of you knew I was going to find a way to mention them!).
While I was navigating all levels of school from elementary to my first year of college, there was a lot of buzz from a leadership development perspective. Mentioned in my last post, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (which I now own thanks to a friend’s generous birthday gift!) was published within those ten years along with Tony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within and Unlimited Power which center on controlling thoughts and emotions as well as developing peak performance. Leaders during that decade included Reagan and two more U.S. Presidents – George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; the end of Mikhail Gorbachev’s leading of Russia followed by Boris Yeltsin; and the conclusion of Margaret Thatcher’s role as Prime Minister followed by John Major. In the second half of this decade, I began to find ways to lead. I oversaw our high school band uniform coordination, making sure inventory was updated and that each band member had the right sizes and pieces for marching band. I also had the chance to coordinate volunteers for our school’s blood drive, a small thing that helped lay the foundation for another volunteer leader opportunity later in life.
I will continue the decades in my next post as I reflect on these past 50 years both personally, professionally, and historically. What are things you recall that shaped you over the decades of your life? I’d love to learn about them! Feel free to share in the comments.
It’s time for another question! This time, the focus is on habits.
What habit, if you did it more consistently, would have a positive effect on your life?
Habits are something that we hear about all the time. There are articles and advice everywhere about the importance of developing good habits as well as how to stop following bad habits. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, emphasizes the importance of incremental methods to establish positive habits and remove negative ones. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, shares research and stories of why habits even exist and how this knowledge will make a difference in what we do.
For me, there are habits that already have a positive effect on my life. One that I’ve shared before is keeping journals. The gratitude journal as some of you know is one where every night before bed, I write down five successes and three things I am thankful for from that day. I do my best not to repeat, but at times it does happen as it may be something that’s tied to a specific goal. I also have a second journal, One Question a Day: A Five-Year Journal, that allows me to answer questions each night and see if the answer changes year over year. Some questions are annually focused such as “What goal would you like to accomplish this year?”, while others may stay the same such as “What is your favorite restaurant?” I’ve had this journal just over two years and enjoy looking at past entries to see what answers have changed and which are identical. The habit of journalling has helped me keep a positive perspective, even on the hardest days, and take time to reflect on where I’m at in the moment.
Looking at habits that I would like to establish as a leader that have a positive effect tie back to Franklin Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. First, I have realized that I need to read this book as it includes critical areas that will bring improvement to my personal and professional life. Reviewing the summary of the habits, I see where I demonstrate elements of each. At the same time, I would like to cultivate some areas to bring further growth. This includes using more proactive language, a deeper review of how I manage my time, and becoming more of an empathic listener. These can bring a positive and supportive approach to those you lead and help focus on the important things that help teams be successful in their purpose.
Habits are a way of life that we continue to make, break, and maintain throughout the years. They can help expand your horizons, make you healthier, or go in the opposite direction and set you back in your goals. Take some time to reflect and ask yourself:
Which habits are serving me well that I should maintain or cultivate?
Which habits are holding me back from my personal and professional goals? What is needed to break these habits?
Which habits do I want to form to help me grow personally and professionally?
