Both, And - A 2022 Reflection

Last year, the Problem Solving Institute accomplished a lot. Not only did we manage to rack up a lot of sky miles, we hit some milestones. Last year was also not devoid of setbacks and failures. 

If we are willing, a good life requires us to acknowledge it’s “both, and” - not only “either, or.”  It’s not about having only accomplishments and if we didn’t, we are failures.  Good leadership requires us to recognize that non dual thinking is helpful - it’s “both, and.”

So, let’s talk a little bit about the “both, and” - the accomplishments AND the setbacks as I reflect on the past year professionally and personally. 

I want to start with the accomplishments from last year because these didn’t just happen in a vacuum. The accomplishments are helping me to not only focus on myself as a leader, but to also focus more intentionally on all the leaders I’ve had the privilege to develop. We will then wrap up with some of the setbacks and lessons learned along with my call to courage as a leader for 2023. 

First, a huge thank you to my teammates, strategic partners, contractors and thought partners who have been a big part of this journey. Your support and hard work were critical to our success. And thank you to our clients. For your trust and for your willingness to show up and stick in the “messy middle” of some challenging leadership development.

We worked with multiple organizations across the country from nonprofits to foundations to for-profit, to energy and manufacturing clients. Each one of these organizations has something in common. People. Leading people is inherently vulnerable. It requires us to care, and let’s face it, the skills needed to be able to lead today are not skills that have been taught in schools when we were preparing to enter the workforce. We are all learning how to do life and leadership a little bit better in the midst of challenging times.

From the looks of it, I trained just shy of 350 people in the intensive Dare to Lead™ curriculum last year. These intensive workshops set the stage for uncomfortable conversations about trust, belonging, vulnerability and innovation (failure) and emotions like shame, grief, fear and acknowledging how those things get in the way of courageous leadership and connection. These workshops wear everyone out, including me and there is a legitimate vulnerability hangover afterward. Just ask anyone who has been through it. But the insights and the openings that happen within our hearts, our lives and our workplaces were/are 1,000,000% worth the hangover. 

Of that 350, about 15% were individuals who were trained in Dare to Lead™ with a racial equity focus. This specific training was in partnership with my strategic partner, Lakweshia Ewing. When clients contact us for leadership development, and they are leading organizations that are serving marginalized groups, or who are working inside organizations that are committed to anti-racism, they can’t be very successful without some sort of foundation. Dare to Lead™ can provide this foundation. It’s hard to have conversations on performance let alone have conversations about systemic racism. Doing so requires intentionality to develop some skills that are needed to talk about race, power and structures AND be aware of how we defend, armor up and tap out of these conversations. But more importantly, we need to understand the history of race, and how all of these systems reinforcing racism were built over the years. Even as a facilitator, I am often in the learner’s seat and that’s OK. This is how we grow, lead better and more importantly, begin to heal as a society.

About 700 additional folks were developed in courage-building skills whether it be keynotes, abbreviated workshops, coaching and conversations. We laughed, we cried, we raged, we high-fived but once we saw we were all just walking each other home, it became a bit more obvious that we are connected. We truly are NOT alone in the struggle of life and leadership. We do have to find ways to stop working our shit out on one another and just talk to each other. 

While we paused temporarily on the scaling of our Foundational Leadership law enforcement program, I did spend a considerable amount of time engaging in the law-enforcement community in particular, getting curious about what support looks like for agencies who are asking for help from civilians. This includes the Raleigh Police Department who asked for help on their Use of Force Policy. I also participated in the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference in October. I spent several days connecting with law enforcement leaders all over the world and learning what agencies are up against right now. COVID and George Floyd’s murder were two pivotal pandemics that happened over the last couple of years that have changed the law enforcement profession considerably.  Law enforcement leaders feel their profession is in crisis but it doesn’t have to be – read more about what I learned here.

I want to give a shout-out to an organization that has developed a considerable amount of individuals over the past year, which is Tennessee Valley Authority. They are a large energy utility located in the southern portion of the US whose focus on leadership development and scaling courage inside of their organization is something to be proud of. I want to thank them (and all utility workers) for their ability to show up during the holidays when there were considerable demands for power.  I also want to reinforce that their willingness to share that their inability to meet reliability and demand requirements was brave. When organizations and leaders are able to say - “hey, we take responsibility and we’re going to commit to learning how to do this differently,” that is what is required in order for us to get better, and in order for us to do better.  See their press release, here.

This summer, myself and our law enforcement partner, Deputy Chief Mitch McKinney, had the privilege of developing a group of educators and administrators from Northern Indiana in the intensive Dare to Lead™ curriculum. They are literally in the trenches and their efforts reminded me of the fatigue and trauma that first responders encounter. This was hard to witness but a call to courage for all of us to acknowledge as this is not sustainable. Educators are often, ALL IN. They care so much that their self-care is nonexistent as of late because our young people have needs that aren’t being met. Educators are showing up to bridge those gaps. This group inspired me to do something to support their efforts in the community. 

In partnership with Cindy McKinney of Region 8 Education Service Center and with the support of North Adams Community Schools, Superintendent Kim Harsh-Hiatt, we have formed a fund whose sole purpose is to support, aid and provide wellness resources to educators in the Region 8 area of Indiana. This fund is open to anyone who’s interested in donating and we will continue to fund and grow this fund with an annual educator conference. This conference will provide an opportunity to restore the connection to educators and their wellness. The fund lives at the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne and we will begin accepting grant requests in the summer of 2023. See our full press release on the Educator Wellness Fund, here.

From a personal perspective, there have been a few changes in my life. This past year I have committed to seeking support to help me heal and to help me grieve considerable losses from early childhood to now. Most of you know I’m a huge fan of coaching and therapy, I don’t believe we can be our best selves without the help of someone else. Because of my ACE Score of 7/10, this support is necessary and a non-negotiable for me. I spent 24 hours of my 2022 in EMDR therapy, I have also spent the last few months deep-diving into grief. 

In February, I will have finished training to become a Certified Grief Educator by working with grief expert, David Kessler. My goal was to acquire skills to integrate into my professional workshops, and more selfishly, skills for my own well-being and healing. However, there may be a possibility for more grief support in the future. If you’re curious why I pursued grief training now, I will share that our society is deeply in grief. Myself included. We have lost a lot over the past couple of years, and learning how to navigate grief will help us live well. 

I’ve also moved to Chicago! This was a decision made from a place of self-awareness and from a place of growth and healing. Chicago is a city that I lived in back in 2009 when I was a general foreman for Amtrak so I decided to come back. I made this choice for a couple of personal and professional reasons. My company is still based in Fort Wayne, IN because that is still a region I want to be connected to.

For 2023, one exciting thing to share is that I am adding the Immunity to Change™ methodology made popular by Harvard researchers, Lisa Lahey and Robert Kegan to my skill set. If you have not heard about this approach, I’m already addicted, and I wish I had it years ago when I was deeply engaged in my change management work. In short, the Immunity to Change™ process helps us identify the unseen, desires, or mechanisms, working in the background that prevent us from making a change that we really want to make. Willpower, while appropriate, is not enough to make a change. It’s pretty awesome! If you want to hear an example of how this works, there is a podcast where Brené Brown actively works through the Immunity to Change™ map with the author of the book.  Here is the link:  podcast

So let’s talk a little bit about setbacks and failures. I learned a lot about growth and how rapid growth isn’t really growth. We learned a lot last year as a result of trying to do a lot with limited resources. There is only so much growth an individual can take on without encountering burn out and without making mistakes. I started to uncover the intersection of quality and quick turnarounds. 

We’ve all heard that we can either get great quality in a slow amount of time or crappy quality in a fast amount of time. This also holds true for human performance. If I am unable to take care of myself well, I can’t lead, facilitate or show up well - anywhere. I love my work, but my self-care needs, and what they look like, are occasionally criticized by my colleagues, but more importantly, by myself. Until I can figure out how to stop the judgment of taking care of myself, the cycle will continue. Judgment demands punishment and why would I want to punish myself for resting and engaging in self care?  Exactly.  You can already see I have yet to figure out this balance.  But I won’t stop trying.  

Something I have recently uncovered is my expectation of individuals who leave Dare to Lead™ training. I have expectations that leaders who have been trained in these skills will be instantly willing and aware of how they show up and will not tap out of hard conversations. Especially when they are with me or about me. That expectation (it’s part of my action bias) is unrealistic and has forced me to face disappointment and grief as a result. I have also become somewhat impatient with backbiting and back-channeling - it’s really toxic, and I am working diligently on being a better advocate for face-to-face, hard conversations. I’ve had a lot of them last year - not all of them went well, and some of them did not happen at all, even with an over-eagerness to have them. 

I have accepted that my expectations are more my problem than anyone else’s and a lacking commitment to the practice of Living BIG. But - I still have hopes that folks who are committed to courageous leadership recognize the power of vulnerability, and how critical it is for us to be able to change cultures, and do business better.  Most importantly, we must talk to each other versus about each other. Keeping the door open for conversations is a sign of generosity and a precursor to forgiveness.  I have hopes that the ones that didn’t happen, will eventually happen because it’s worth it.  

Professionally, there have been colleagues and clients that have discontinued a working relationship with me and I have also discontinued working relationships with some in return. I make up a story that this is a bad thing. This doesn’t feel realistic either because nothing lasts forever as we change all day, every day and letting go is a leadership skill.  

But what I uncovered with this new awareness, is that I have not been grieving well which has gotten in my way of letting go. So for this year, my plan is to integrate grief into my daily spiritual and leadership practice. There will be people that leave my life and there will be relationships that end, and that’s OK. I’m not sure that this is a failure or a setback, but this is an important lesson for us all to hear. I recently learned that in order to live well, we need to grieve well. I would say that in order to lead well, I also need to grieve AND forgive well with hopes of being forgiven in return. Grief is wrapped all around forgiveness. 

Grief.  How’s that for a 2023 word for the year? It’s my call to courage. Grief is a part of a life and career that’s full of connection, joy and love. So, here’s to grief and to another great year ahead and continual commitment to embracing the suck!

(My year-end sabbatical helped me to really get some clarity on the importance of grief. On that note, the featured photo is one of my favorites from my hike in the desert.  Cheers!)