Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

  • Want Real Teamwork? Start With Vulnerability!

    Want Real Teamwork? Start With Vulnerability!

    I was sitting in a multi-day training with a group of executive leaders. I had yet to put my finger on what was missing with this team, when a question was asked that made me realize, these people don’t know each other. Through this question, it became apparent that they aren’t “allowed” to put their guard down and be real. They don’t feel like they have permission to be vulnerable.

    Some of these people had been working together for ten plus years and were hard pressed to name any of their colleagues hobbies much less their co-workers spouse and/or kids’ names.

    And they were passing this mindset down the chain and throughout the company. The uber-professional guard they had up was creating issues with trust, teamwork, and ultimately business results.

    To be an authentic leader requires a certain level of vulnerability. As Criss Jami said, “To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.”

    It’s hard, though, to just come flat out and ask, “tell me how you are weak” especially with people in leadership roles. If you have a team lacking in vulnerability with each other, here are three suggestions (starting from easiest to most difficult to facilitate) to get people talking in a way that exposes vulnerability and allows strength to rise out of weakness:

    1. Ask the group to answer a pre-prepared list of questions about themselves. Then have the group simply share their responses. These questions can be anything from, “Do you have pets? What kind and what are their names?” to “Where did you grow up?” to more probing and thought provoking questions like “What is the best advice you have ever received?” to “What do you want your legacy to be?”
    2. Simply ask the group to share their response to what has been their greatest success in life so far and what has been their greatest failure. I would also suggest you ask for the greatest professional and personal success and failure so that people don’t limit their responses to only work related answers that the team may already know.
    3. Ask the group to share their story. To do this, ask them to share the 5-7 defining moments of their life that have shaped who they are.

    As Brene Brown said, “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”
     

    How do you help people step into the light by way of darkness?

    Shine today.

     

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    2018 Is the Year of Authenticity

    The Essence of Authenticity

     

  • 4 Ways to Listen To Yourself

    4 Ways to Listen To Yourself

    “Your life is always speaking to you. The fundamental question is: Will you listen?”  Oprah

    Last week, I declared 2018 the year of authenticity, outlining five things that need to be present for someone cultivate authenticity: listening, gratitude, acting out of joy instead of obligation, being vulnerable and avoiding comparison to others.

    Authentic means being real and true to your design. But how do we actually practice the things?

    I’m coming to believe you can’t practice any of them without first listening to yourself.

    And in order to listen to yourself or anyone else, you have to find quiet. The noise has to be turned off.

    I’m sitting in my home office, watching the very beginnings of the sun rising. Everyone else is asleep in my house. It is quiet, still, peaceful. I’ve found that rising early is about the only time I can find literal quiet. But in finding the literal quiet, I have been able to find inner quiet more throughout the day since beginning some practices that cultivate the ability to listen to myself.

    Some ideas to help you listen to yourself include:

    • Practicing meditation. Here is a great beginner’s guide to meditation.
    • Practicing yoga. Yoga is similar to meditation in that it guides you to focus on your breath, but different in that it is an active practice that can be viewed as a physical workout as well as a mental and spiritual one. I like Yoga Zone videos if you’re a beginner.  If you also run, I like Runner’s Love Yoga although her flow and tone is less peaceful than the Yoga Zone instructors.
    • Exercising. Speaking of running, you can combine it with meditation.  If this is of interest to you, you might find Another Mother Runner podcast: Mindful Running with Author Mackenzie Havey valuable.
    • Journaling. I’ve found that combining a gratitude list and a prayer list in my everyday journaling exercise to be what speaks to me the most to tune into myself each day.

    I don’t know about you, but with so much going on during the day, if these things don’t start off the day, they don’t happen. Seeking to rise early allows these things and therefore the quiet that I need to be able to listen to myself so I can better hear throughout the day.

    If you are seeking rise early as a practice, here are a couple of good resources to consider:

    7 Morning Habits that Make People Happier

    The Early to Rise Experience

     

    Oprah’s quote tells us that we always have an inner voice that needs to be heard. If we listen, it guides us to better living. Authentic living.

    Another quote from her helps us know when we’ve found it:

    “You’ll know you’ve found it when every cell in your body vibrates with your own truth. When you’re filled up by what you’re doing instead of being drained by it.”

     

    Be filled today.

     

     

  • The Essence of Authenticity

    The Essence of Authenticity

    We’re talking about #authenticity here at The Point Blog. This poem captures the essence of advice for authentic living.

     

    when it came to listening

    my mother taught me silence

    if you are drowning their voice with yours

    how will you hear them she asked

     

    when it came to speaking

    she said do it with commitment

    every word you say 

    is your own responsibility

     

    when it came to being

    she said be tender and touch at once

    your need to be vulnerable to live fully

    but rough enough to survive it all

     

    when it came to choosing

    she asked me to be thankful

    for the choices i had that 

    she never had the privilege of making

     

    Lessons from mumma

    from

    The sun and her flowers

    Rupi kaur

  • The Year of Authenticity

    The Year of Authenticity

    2016 was the “Year of Stories.” 2017 was the “Year of Innovation.” And whereas these themes for 2016 and 2017 at Horizon Point were determined at the conclusion of both years, on January 7, 2018, I already determined that “2018 Is the Year of Authenticity.”

    Why?

    Well, because I didn’t spend much time in 2017 living authentically. I was too distracted. Too busy. And throughout the year of doing lots of leadership training, teambuilding, coaching, and just having lots of conversations with people, it seems as though I’m not the only one that struggles with living authentically.

    2017, in large part, was the year I spent becoming something I swore I would never be. Our doctor friend talks about it often, when women in their mid-thirties (I turned 34 in December) come in to his office wanting a diagnosis of some kind for how they are feeling. They seem to have it all, but because of a conglomeration of things, they are wallowing in misery and want to find a place to place the blame. Where a pill can be prescribed to fix it all.

    Although I never saw a doctor in 2017, looking for a diagnosis related to how I felt, and maybe I should have, (I did see several for a lump that turned out to just be “density”). I do believe for myself and for many women my age, the cause of this is a lack of authenticity.

    The problem comes from a lack of being true to oneself amid trying to be everything to everyone else, accompanied by the feeling that none of the doing is noticed and/or appreciated.

    2017 was a year of tension. One in which business was growing, my children blossoming, but stress was all around in balancing these two important parts of my life, which led to neglecting some others. I fought with the two people closest to me more than I ever have, began to wake up in the middle of the night not being able to turn my brain off (I’ve never had a problem sleeping) and I felt like everything I was doing was out of a sense of obligation, not enjoyment.

    I knew something was wrong mid-year when all I wanted to do was escape (to where, I don’t know) and my husband told me, “One of the things I love most about you is your confidence. Where has it gone?” In seeking to help everyone else live with confidence, I had somehow lost my own.

    So, I’m committed in 2018 to being authentic, and helping others lead with authenticity. To that end, here is what I believe leads to an authentic life:

    1. The Practice of Listening. First, listen to yourself so you can then listen better to others around you.  And listening requires quiet and stillness.
    2. Living in Gratitude. For out of a place of gratitude comes the ability to see all things for what they are.
    3. The Ability to Not Do Things Out of Obligation But Instead Out of Joy. This means saying no so you can say yes to what matters and what uniquely makes you you.
    4. The Ability to Be Vulnerable. You and I don’t have it all together, no one does. And out of the realization of this comes the ability to connect to others.
    5. The Ability to Not Compare Yourself to Others.   

    I’m focusing on these points this year. I’ll talk next week about how I think they can best be cultivated and practiced and I hope you’ll join me in living some of these practices as we embark on authentic living in 2018.

    Like this post?  You may also like:

    Saying “No” to Something is Saying “Yes” to Something Else

    Real Leadership

  • 2017 Book of the Year

    2017 Book of the Year

    “Being original doesn’t mean being first. It just means being different and better.”

    Adam Grant, Originals

     

    Most of us strive to be better.  Few of us strive to be different.  But what if being different is a requirement for being better? For being an original? Turns out that to take better beyond just ourselves, we have to be both.  We have to be non-conformists in order to move the world, according to Adam Grant, author of Originals.

    And because our goal at Horizon Point is to build a better workplace through innovative people practices, we’ve chosen Originals, our 2017 Book of the Year.

     

    The book teaches how to become an original by:

    1. Taking calculated risks. We think most innovative people have risk-taking in their DNA, but it turns out there are some guardrails around risk taking when it comes to the most successful innovators.

    2. Embracing failure.  Failure that leads to innovation comes from quantity of ideas not necessarily quality.

    3. Embracing diversity of thought.  For more on this: Diversity and Inclusion In My Eyes and In the Eyes of My Children.

    4. Speaking up. You can’t be original if your ideas don’t get translated.  This requires voice.  More on this here.

    5. “Passionately procrastinating”.  For more on this: Leaders, Set Manageable Goals to Lead and Run Well.

    6. Converting your enemies. Your actual enemies. Not your frienemies. There is a great example in the book to describe the difference.

    7. Building commitment through purpose.  

    8. Getting over yourself. The ego, especially an inflated one, gets someone who could have all these other characteristics nowhere. Being authentic is required to be an original.

     

    “In the quest for happiness, as Grant writes, “many of us choose to enjoy the world as it is. Originals embrace the uphill battle, striving to make the world what it could be.…Becoming original is not the easiest path in the pursuit of happiness, but it leaves us perfectly poised for the happiness of the pursuit.”

    Go pursue.

     

    Like this post? You may also like:

    Our pick for best leadership book of the year:  Reality-Based Leadership

    Our pick for best novel of the year:  A Fall of Marigolds