How can you purposefully navigate your team through end of 2020 into first quarter 2021? And purposefully leverage your team’s story?
Because 2020 continuously presents you with a never-ending set of choices. Obstacles to overcome. And hard calls and major decisions for all team members to make. Working together, whether virtually, hybridized or physically together, is overwhelming and exhausting. For all of us. Together.
Your choices, and your pandemic experiences, are the structural underpinning of your team’s story. Think about it.
- As you and your team participate in strategic planning for 2021, you find comfort in repeating these professional traditions. Thus, you feel you are doing something purposeful and valuable. And you are.
- Except moving into 2021 together feels different, doesn’t it? Because repeating yesterday’s ingrained traditions, our “norms,” now feel out of sync.
How will do you leverage 2020 to get your team from where you are today to where you really need to go tomorrow? One millimeter at a time, together.
Here are two ways to purposefully navigate your team as you move towards 2021 together.
- Become comfortable being uncomfortable. With a big caveat. Let each team member define what makes them uncomfortable. Because everyone has a different capacity to embrace what is new, next and continuously changing. Some team members still grapple with showing up for meetings on time, because their eldercare or childcare or transportation is compromised. Regardless of the nature of everyone’s ability to be comfortable being uncomfortable, acknowledge them. Each day, on behalf of better serving their team, they individually negotiate their own level of comfort.
- Reduce the scope of objectives and goals. It’s like an airport runway, chunked into smaller milestones. Everyone still takes off together, at the end of the runway. However, when the horizon is comprised of a number of milestones, team members are less likely to be overwhelmed thinking about the entire runway they have to traverse. Oh, and along that runway, as you gain momentum together? Make sure everyone has an acknowledged, appreciated and valued role to play and contribution to make. So they get to where they really need to go. Together. One millimeter of that runway at a time.
There is no better time than now to leverage the human capital value of co-created team stories as part of your 2021 strategic planning.
Not the typical, formulaic use- or business-cases with perfect outcomes and featured products and services. Rather, stories that marry up with your clients’ experiences during 2020, as well. Tell the real-life, boots-on-the-ground stories. About the stuff people really need to hear. And the things they really need to know about the value your team brings to their business tables. Together.
To get started co-creating a team story that becomes your legacy and legend, contact me here. Let’s set up a time to translate the human capital value you all contribute to your employers and clients.
Hello! I am a refreshingly extroverted (!) STEM professional and left-brain thinker specializing in professional innovation, cross-functional leadership and client retention. I catalyze leaders like you to translate across communication and collaboration disconnects. Become more professionally visible, cross-functionally relevant and strategically valuable to your organizations. Better serve each other first so you better serve your clients together. One millimeter at a time. My One Millimeter Mindset™ virtual and in-person speaking programs leverage Voice of the Customer design methodology and storytelling to move individuals, teams, departments and organizations one millimeter beyond yesterday’s tools and today’s professional comfort zones My playbook of cross-functional collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com. Contact me here.
Image source: Adobe Stock.
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