While the calendar has turned from 2020 to 2021, we still find ourselves in difficult and uncertain times. We do have the opportunity to tap into the power of creation as we start this new year. On this episode, I talk about how important and powerful it can be to create this new year with intention. I also provide a specific process and series of questions we can answer as we set our goals for 2021. Conscious creation is essential and can help us both manifest what we truly want and focus on what matters most.
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How to Bring Closure to 2020
I don’t think I’ve ever been so ready for a year to end. How about you?
What a challenging, bizarre, and painful time it has been in our country and our world. And, as 2020 wraps up, it’s easy to just say “good riddance” and hope for brighter days ahead.
However, as difficult as this year has been for us collectively, and for many of us personally, it’s important for us to acknowledge all that’s happened, as well as our growth and the fact that we made it through.
On a recent episode of my podcast, I reflect on this unprecedented year and share a powerful process and set of questions we can ask ourselves to bring real closure and completion to 2020.
I’ve been doing a version of this process at the end of the year for the past two decades. Conscious completion is important and allows us to step into the New Year more powerfully.
Here are some questions you can ask and answer yourself, as a way to create a sense of closure for 2020:
- What were my biggest lessons in 2020?
- What am I most proud of from this past year?
- What were my biggest disappointments in 2020?
- What am I ready to let go of from this past year?
- What else do I need to do or say to be complete with 2020?
See if you can create some sacred time in the next few days to think about and write down your answers to these questions. You can also share your answers with some of the important people around you (and maybe ask them to answer them as well).
By creating a conscious intention for completion, you give yourself the gift of reflection and maybe even some appreciation for this past year. Doing this allows a space to open up in which to create your intentions for 2021 with a sense of openness and peace.
This year has been like nothing we’ve ever experienced before…and we’re still in the midst of an incredibly uncertain time.
Even with all that has happened and is still happening, there is so much for us to reflect upon that we can be grateful for and so many ways we’ve grown and changed this year.
No matter how painful or bumpy it was…you made it through this year. Be gentle with yourself and others. And, remember, we’re all in this together!
How will you consciously complete 2020? What can you do or say to leave 2020 behind you in an authentic way? Feel free to leave your thoughts, ideas, and feelings below in the comments.
How We Move Forward…Together
This has been an election like we’ve never seen here in the United States, in the midst of a year like we’ve never experienced.
I’m grateful that President-Elect Joe Biden is calling for cooperation, unity, and healing. However, what has become abundantly clear over the course of the past few days, weeks, and months, is that we’re a deeply divided nation.
And while we already knew this going into the election, my hope and prayer is that things can change in this regard as we move forward. Coming together is going to take a lot of work on all of our parts, but I believe it is necessary for so many reasons.
Mother Teresa said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” This is true in our families, our teams, our organizations, our communities, our country, and our world.
I wrote my book, We’re All in This Together, for a few different reasons. One of my main intentions was to remind us that we’re way more alike than we are different and that togetherness, while incredibly challenging at times, is necessary for us to thrive – individually and collectively.
Yes, we have some fundamental differences. And, we have some serious issues to resolve, problems to address, and things to change, for sure. Yet, at the same time, there is so much that binds us as Americans and human beings.
As I talked about on a recent podcast episode, for us to authentically confront these challenges and to make meaningful change, it’s going to require us to shift from our us versus them mentality, and remember that there really is no them, it’s all us.
And while we can’t control how the leaders in Washington behave, as well as the nature of the discourse in the media, we can definitely adjust the way we personally operate, communicate, and interact with those around us, as well as on social media.
Here are some things we can think about, focus on, and do, to help us move forward…together:
1. Reach out to those who voted differently – Although the final vote count is still coming in, we know that more than 70 million people voted for each of the candidates. If we’re willing to reach out and check in with people in our lives who may have voted differently than we did, we can learn a bit more about where they’re coming from, how they’re feeling, and figure out how to come together, even with our different perspectives, ideas, and beliefs.
2. Operate with compassion – Emotions are running high these days – due to the pandemic, social unrest, economic uncertainty, and more – in addition to the election. By engaging with others compassionately, not only can we more fully understand them, we make it safer and easier to connect in authentic and effective ways, especially with people who see things differently than we do. Compassion is about relating to others emotionally and having empathy for their experience, not necessarily agreeing with them or seeing things the same way. Right now things are intense, scary, and challenging for most of us and for many different reasons. Let’s be gentle with ourselves and with others.
3. Remove self-righteousness – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We have no morally persuasive power with those who can feel our underlying contempt for them.” In order to understand and influence people who think differently than we do, we have to let go of our divisive self-righteousness, and shift it to healthy conviction. We have important issues to discuss and debate, but making people wrong doesn’t lead to connection, cooperation, or togetherness…it just further separates us from one another.
4. Look for and find common ground – The dividing lines of liberal versus conservative and red state versus blue state are reinforced all over the place these days. Remembering that we’re all Americans and as human beings we have so much common ground with one another is essential. We may look, think, pray, act, believe, and vote differently, but we actually have way more that brings us together than divides us. Our job is to look for and find these commonalities, and to use them as the foundation for our discussions and debates.
Although it may not always seem like it, especially right now, I believe that we truly are all in this together. And, operating from this perspective is what will allow us to create more unity, connection, and positive change as we move forward during this critical time in the history of our country and our world.
We’re All in This Together – 4 Key Traits of High Performing Teams
When I wrote my latest book, We’re All in This Together: Creating a Team Culture of High Performance, Trust, and Belonging, I had no idea it would come out in the midst of a global pandemic which has had a significant impact on every aspect of work and life in our world. However, now more than ever, for our teams to navigate these challenging times successfully, we must come together, connect authentically, and lean on each other, which is what my new book and my work are all about.
For the past 20 years, I’ve been studying, researching, speaking, and writing about the qualities of great teams. I’ve been honored to partner with organizations like Google, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Schwab, eBay, Genentech, Gap, the NBA, the Oakland A’s, and so many others—helping them enhance the culture and performance of their teams.
In addition to these large, well-known brands, I’ve also worked with small businesses, government agencies, educational institutions, nonprofits, local school districts, and more. And, while each team and organization have their own unique challenges, goals, and dynamics, there are some universal qualities that allow teams to effectively collaborate, trust each other, and perform at the highest level.
Here are the four key traits of high performing teams that I’ve learned through all of my research and experience:
1. Create Psychological Safety. Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for risk-taking. People on teams with psychological safety have a sense of confidence that their team will not embarrass, reject, or punish them for speaking up or taking risks. The team climate is characterized by an atmosphere of interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves without fear of negative consequences to their self-image, status, or career. Essentially, psychological safety is trust at a group level.
Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson has researched and written extensively about psychological safety over the past 20 years. “It’s not enough for organizations to simply hire talent,” she says. “If leaders want to unleash individual and collective talent, they must foster a psychologically safe climate where employees feel free to contribute ideas, share information, and report mistakes.”
A 2017 Gallup study found that only three in ten employees strongly agree with the statement that their opinions count at work. Gallup calculated that by “moving the ratio to six in ten employees, organizations could realize a 27 percent reduction in turnover, a 40 percent reduction in safety incidents, and a 12 percent increase in productivity.”
2. Focus on Inclusion and Belonging. An essential element of creating a safe environment that allows people to trust each other, collaborate with one another, and perform at their highest level as a team is inclusion and belonging. There are countless studies linking inclusion to higher profits, increased engagement scores, and enhanced business results.
For example, according to a study of 140 U.S. companies by Accenture alongside the American Association of People with Disabilities and Disability:IN, those that offered the most inclusive working environment for employees with disabilities achieved an average 28 percent higher revenue, 30 percent greater economic pro t margins, and twice the net income of their industry peers between 2015 and 2018.
Inclusion means “having respect for and appreciation of differences in ethnicity, gender, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, education, and religion.” It also means “actively involving everyone’s ideas, knowledge, perspectives, approaches, and styles to maximize business success.” And, as important as it is for us to focus on both diversity and inclusion, the ultimate goal is to create an environment on the team and in the company where everyone feels as though they belong, regardless of who they are, the role they have, and their background.
3. Embrace Sweaty-Palmed Conversations. Great teams embrace conflict and feedback as natural and important aspects of growth, collaboration, and success. This means we have to be willing to have those awkward, uncomfortable, sweaty-palmed conversations with each other. The problem is that because conflict and feedback can be hard, most teams aren’t very good at it. However, when team members create an environment that is conducive to having healthy and productive conflict, they have an ability to connect more deeply, navigate challenges effectively, give each other feedback in a way that makes everyone better, and innovate in ways that allow them to thrive. Research conducted by CPP Inc., publisher of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, has shown that in the U.S., workplace conflict costs companies more than $350 billion a year. And that figure reflects just the time people spend dealing with conflict; it doesn’t include the emotional, psychological, and physical toll it takes on people personally.
Nate Regier, author of Conflict without Casualties, whom I had a chance to interview on my podcast, says, “The purpose of conflict is to create, not destroy.”
4. Care About and Challenge Each Other. What I’ve seen, experienced, and learned about high-performing teams over the years is that they understand and have a balance of two important things at the same time: Caring About Each Other and Challenging Each Other. Both are essential and both have to be focused on with the same level of intensity for the team and all of its members to perform at the highest level.
For a team to thrive there must be a deep level of trust that everyone has each other’s backs, has good intentions, and is moving in the same direction together.
In a piece published in the Harvard Business Review in 2017, neuroeconomist Paul Zak writes, “Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report 74 percent less stress, 50 percent higher productivity, and 76 percent more engagement.” In other words, creating a strong culture of trust, as well as an environment where people know they’re cared about and supported by their teammates, leads to significantly greater engagement and performance.
When our team understands, practices, and embodies these four key traits, we can create a culture of high performance, trust, and belonging. And, doing this allows us to thrive, even and especially when we’re facing uncertainty and challenge like we are today.
For more information about the book click here. Feel free to leave any questions or comments below in the comments section.
* This is an adapted excerpt from We’re All in This Together, by Mike Robbins, published by Hay House Business, April 2020
Making Positive Change with the Start-Stop-Continue Technique
Happy New Year! Continuing the theme of making positive change as we head into 2020, I want to share a technique that you can use to get some clarity now and over the course of the year – for yourself and for your team. The Start-Stop-Continue technique is a simple, healthy, and positive prompt that you can use for yourself personally, with your teams as a group exercise, or even as a whole team exercise. I explain how to use this effective technique in different ways – to give and receive feedback and to make important changes individually and collectively. As we kick off this new year, consider what can you start, stop, and continue?
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