Completing the Year Powerfully

Each December, lots of people do an end-of-year completion exercise. It’s a chance to take stock of what they accomplished over the past year. There’s a lot of power in doing this. When we take a step back from the day-to-day, we can see all the places where we’ve moved the needle. We get to say, “I did all that” and feel the satisfaction that comes from this.

Yet, it occurs to me that the typical way of doing this exercise does not do justice to what we’ve really done. Asking the question, “What have I accomplished” masks something much more accurate and even, profound. It ignores the others with whom we are linked. While our actions stemmed from a stand we took, what escapes our notice is how that stand does not arise out of thin air nor occur in isolation. Stands arise out of our interconnectedness and, when made public, out of the quality of listening our relationships give us. Often, others join with us in our stand because we are standing for the possibility of something that has resonance for them, too. Such as our stand to shift our diet to eat in a healthy way.

That’s why, to take full stock of the past year, I invite people to look beyond the fiction called, “what I accomplished,” and look at the question, “what did we accomplish?” This gives us a clearer, truer and more expansive picture.

That “we” picture has to factor in how everything we did involved in some way the give and take of working together: e.g. our agreeing on a goal, setting a plan, finding the resources, meeting, working through differences of opinion, and making mid-stream adjustments.

Part of what makes the accomplishments meaningful is to consider what this took from you in your interactions with others that you may not have known you had. E.g. the ability to enroll people via a presentation you gave. Offer the benefit of your advice or grant someone the generosity of your listening. How you completed a difficult negotiation. Or how you made and fulfilled an “impossible” promise to someone. Perhaps it was the way you hashed out some fundamental differences, or allowed yourself to be a beginner and ask for support. But again, you had to work together with others to coordinate your actions to get things done.

To round out the picture of your year even further, look at the outcomes that may not have been your most prized priorities but which were still important to others. Own how you supported others to make their accomplishments real. These are your accomplishments as well.

Then look and see where you are today as a consequence of what you’ve accomplished. Are you standing in a new, more satisfying place within your network, your organization, perhaps your industry?

The “we” way of looking can open enormous space: once you’ve looked back, you can also look forward and begin imagining ‘what new possibilities, such as new goals and projects, might be possible in the coming year because of who I - and we - have become?’

I welcome you to be in touch about how to use this completion process or to let me know how it went for you!

The Glow May Start With You

This time of year, perhaps more than any other, our attention turns to light, warmth, and beauty. When it gets so dark, instinctively, we seek light. Lights can be very beautiful. I especially love the glow of the silver and blue lights you see strung on some of the trees.

Our sense of rhythm changes this time of year. We speed up to get our work done before the mad rush of the holidays and year end. Part of us also wants to shift gears and slow down. The holiday season is a time of wonderment. To experience that, we need to pause and let that in. It’s also a time of year when we reach out to people. We are grateful for many of our co-workers. We may feel like fellow-survivors. The past year or so has not been easy. Yet, we’re still here. Acknowledging that would be a welcome gesture.

Having researched, written about, and worked with workplace survivors, I wonder, given the economy, how is this season being celebrated where you, or those close to you, work? Is there any kind of communal celebration? Did there used to be? Or, have your office traditions been sliced from the budget this year?

Suppose the sense of holiday and celebration is missing from your office environment. If so, I invite you to generate that spirit yourself. Better yet, enroll your work group or department and create something worthy of who you are and what you share. It would be a terrible loss to give in to the scrooges. You, your co-workers and your office, I’m betting, could really use the light, warmth, and beauty you provide.

(c) 2009 Jeremy Nash, Fierce Partners