🌹🌱🌵; 8–14 June, 2020
“To uncover your true potential you must first find your own limits and then you have to have the courage to blow past them.” — Picabo Street
I’m feeling: 😪
🌹Roses:
🤗 Something that went well this week: Progress
I started writing! Even as I write this, I still feel the usual barriers. Why is writing something that feels so tough?
💌 Something I’m grateful for: Generosity and insight
Over the last few years I’ve grown an interest in employee experience and culture design. More recently, I’ve been trying to uncover a path to moving into a role where I can leverage my skills and knowledge in user research and design thinking, and apply them to culture change and design. In order to uncover what I need to do to pursue this goal, I’ve reached out to a few people who work as change consultants at Metalogue, Nobl, Utopia, and Xplane on LinkedIn. I wasn’t really expecting any of them to make any time for me, but I figured it was worth a try. I’m grateful I did because everyone has been responsive and the generosity of these people in taking some time out to shed some light for me has been invaluable.
💡Something that happened I wasn’t expecting: a reminder of value based living
I stumbled across a response I wrote a couple of years ago to an article on goal attainment
Bring your goals closer and closer to you until what you are doing is no longer goal-oriented at all, but just a mode of being… By committing yourself to learning (verb) rather than the state (noun) of having learnt something, you will get to that state quicker and take more in. — Matt Oxley
It reminded me that I need to pause and reflect on why I would value a career in culture/change consulting and how I could break that goal down into a verb/mode of being rather than an outcome or end state that I have to wait to reach before I can feel satisfied and accomplished. I’m not sure I have the brain capacity for this in the present moment, but I’ve made a note-to-self to come back to this in another post.
🌱 Buds:
Something that I’m excited about/looking forward to: time off and learning
I’ve got 4 days off this coming week, and I plan to spend them deep diving into all things culture. I’ve signed myself up to:
- an event by Utopia’s Culture Social about Psychological Safety and Trust in the Workplace,
- 3 Coursera psychology courses; Organisational Analysis, Social Psychology, and Relationships & understanding human needs
- reading The Culture Code
Let’s see how much of that I can actually get through
An idea not yet fully formed: content ideas
Almost two years ago, I sat in an apartment in Barcelona listing all of the activities and concepts that helped me to overcome the crippling anxiety I used to struggle with onto sticky notes. I was trying to organise them into the four quadrants of the Scott and Jaffe Change Model. My plan was to create a bunch of actionable content, in a step-by-step series of posts, that might help others to grow confidence in themselves and live better lives. For some reason I never followed through on this, and it’s something I’d like to pick up again.
Something I’ve learned: high expectations without deep devotion makes you cold
I listened to a Ted Interview podcast on Francis Frei’s three pillars of leadership (empathy, logic and authenticity) where Francis made the case that good leaders make others better as a result of their presence, so that they can thrive without their presence. She said that for a leader to empower someone in their presence requires trust, love and belonging. Something that stuck with me was when she spoke about true love as being the ability have both really high standards of and deep devotion to people’s success.
The challenge is that for most of us, when we set high standards, we start to get a little chilly towards people. Those people will experience our high standards without deep devotion. — Francis Frei
This hit a chord with me, because I know that there are times where perhaps I’ve fallen into this trap. I’ve found that being not being colocated with my team during a time of chaos and uncertainty has made it easier to fall into focusing more on the expectations side than the deep devotion side. This has reminded me the importance of keeping this balance in order for everyone to achieve their greatest potential.
🌵Thorns:
Something I’m worried about: career vs motherhood
Time moving too fast. I’m by no means old, and realistically I know there’s plenty of time for all of the things I’d like to happen in my career (and life) to come to fruition. But it doesn’t stop me from worrying about “how far” I need to get before thinking about when the right age to have kids is and which one will come first.
Something I’m struggling/struggled with: finding flow time
Finding the right time of day/week to write these. I originally intended to write this on a Friday afternoon and spend Saturday mornings writing a deep dive on a resource that helped me learn something.
Something that didn’t go how I planned: this lengthy post
This post — I thought I’d just write bullet points for each but somehow it’s turned into a much lengthier piece!
