Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Leadership

Beyond Leadership is Horizon Point’s line of resources for managers of people. Managing ourselves is a distinct set of behaviors from managers the work of others, and we are here to help. Read stories in this category if you are ready to take the next step into people leadership (or if you’re looking for articles to send someone else…).

  • Who’s on First? Solving the Talent Development Puzzle

    Who’s on First? Solving the Talent Development Puzzle

    Last month, I had the true pleasure of spending an entire day with HR practitioners and partners who are innovating HR across the Southeast. Being fired up about talent development, as I always am, I shared stories of Horizon Point’s work helping clients craft thoughtful, strategic talent development processes. 

    Talent development case studies often start with the “Who’s on first?” problem. You know the one I mean.

    We don’t often know who’s on first or what’s on second. Who’s getting promoted, nearing retirement, or leaving the organization for another opportunity? When they leave, who’s up next in the succession plan? How are we developing emerging talent? How are we keeping track of the pipeline for future hires? Whew! 

    The Association for Talent Development (ATD) says, “Definitions vary by country and culture, by industry, by organizational strategy, and by the responsibilities of the people practicing it. At the heart of talent development are the people—the talent. Ultimately, the function of talent development is to build employees’ knowledge, skills and attitudes so the organization can succeed and grow.” So how do we do that? 

    Step 1: We start with the basics, like current number of employees, organizational chart, turnover rates, etc. to help us understand the funnel and answer the question: How many high potential employees does it take to fully execute a strategic succession plan? 

    Step 2: We ask what high potential employees will actually need to effectively execute the plan. This step involves job analysis and developing competencies or KSAOs. 

    Step 3: We train the trainer. We equip all current executives and managers with the understanding and skills for ongoing execution of the succession plan, so that the HR department (and/or HPC consultants) isn’t solely responsible. Talent development is everyone’s responsibility. 

    At this point, we help the organization shift into ongoing strategic talent development, with or without our help. To maintain development goals, organizations will incorporate assessments and coaching into the formal performance management and leadership development processes. 

    For example, we helped two clients develop custom assessments that are mapped to their organizational values and self-defined leadership competencies. These assessments help inform decisions about leadership readiness and/or promotability. 

    By combining objective data and subjective insight from trained people managers, organizations can strategically solve the talent development puzzle!

    Read more from HPC related to strategic talent development: 

  • Love is an Action Word

    Love is an Action Word

    Ever heard of the saying that “love is an action word?” If that’s true, then how do you “act” like you love someone? With it being Valentine’s Day, you may be thinking of candy, cards & flowers. Imagery of red roses or big pink, heart shaped boxes may be dancing in your mind. This might be the love that you would show a partner or someone that you care deeply about. Love goes beyond our feelings, it is an expression of gratitude for that person. How does it feel to have someone show up for you in this way? Do you feel appreciated and valued? Do you prefer for someone to say that they love you, to spend time with you, to do the dishes, buy you jewelry or give you a great big hug? 

    I’m confident that most of you are familiar with The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. If someone has asked me once they have asked me 1,000 times, have you read the book, have you taken the quiz, what is your love language? Full disclosure: I have never read the book, nor have I taken the quiz. I know it, throw stones at me, gasp! However, this leads me to my point of redemption. Did you know that there are actually Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace? I have taken the quiz and everything!

    The Languages of Appreciation are: Acts of Service, Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Tangible Gifts and Appropriate Physical Touch. My primary language is Words of Affirmation followed by Quality Time. I scored lowest in Tangible Gifts. In the workplace, I need to be affirmed by my employer and to know that I am doing a good job or, conversely, ways that I can be improving. Being relatively new to my position, I like for someone to spend time walking me through a project before turning me loose. If an employer or co-workers speak to me in a way that is not my language of appreciation, then I will have a hard time hearing it.

    I love the way that the Horizon Point Team incorporates appreciation into the everyday work/life balance. Mary Ila does a phenomenal job of speaking words of appreciation and even sending a handwritten note. As a piece of our Illuminate Workshop, we encourage writing gratitude notes each week. Personally, I try to send 3 a week to show the people around me that they matter. Jillian makes time to create videos to show me how to complete projects. Lorrie and Taylor create “space” for me to walk me through work projects via Zoom calls or meeting in person. These are the ways that they show me they appreciate me, and how I feel that appreciation.

    However, there is a difference between appreciation and recognition. Appreciation is about people and recognition is about results. Appreciation is gratitude for who my co-workers are. Gratitude is a mindset or perspective. All of these things tied together create Psychological Safety in the workplace, and it brings me to Horizon Point’s theme for 2023 which is an “Abundance of Space“. Psychological Safety gives people space and frees them to be who they need to be without fear of judgement. It gives others the permission to make mistakes and learn through the process.

    On this Valentine’s Day, I began with saying that Love is an Action Word, and I believe that with my whole heart. If I love others, I appreciate them and give them space to be become who they need to be. In a successful team, appreciation is shown and there is a large degree of Psychological Safety within the organization. Does your workplace show appreciation in your designated language, and is there a safe space to learn and grow? If not, how can you incorporate that into your daily routine?

    Here at Horizon Point, we offer training on The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace and Building a Psychologically Safe Workplace. Click here to learn more:

  • Celebrate Your Accomplishments

    Celebrate Your Accomplishments

    The new year always brings with it conversations of resolutions and setting goals. It’s the chance to look at the year ahead and decide what you want to accomplish in the next twelve months, both personally and professionally. We sit and we write down those goals and we make our checklist. And throughout the year we (hopefully) mark items off that list. But what do you do when you mark an item off that list? 

    At Horizon Point, we celebrate our accomplishments. Each quarter during our team meeting we go around the table and each team member shares a list of ten things we accomplished during the quarter and then picks one that we want to celebrate and how we want to celebrate it. The how is totally up to us and varies from things like a gift card to a local shop or restaurant to a new pair of running shoes to a book we’ve been wanting to read. For me, my latest accomplishment list included graduating from Tulane Law School with my Master’s in Jurisprudence in Labor and Employment Law, a two-year journey that was both long and fast. Part of my celebration included going out to dinner with the team. 

    As you go through 2023, I challenge you to create an accomplishment list. It may include items that are on your goals list and you might find that it includes items that are not on your goals list. Just 8-10 things that you accomplished each quarter, and then pick the one that you want to celebrate and how you want to celebrate it. And these accomplishments can be personal or professional. 

    If you are the leader of a team, try doing this with your team this year. Ask every member of your team to share their accomplishments each quarter. This can be through an accomplishment list like we do at Horizon Point or you can choose your own format. The important thing is to get your employees to take the time to recognize their own accomplishments and to celebrate them. The celebrations don’t have to be something big; it can be a small gesture like a handwritten note congratulating them on their accomplishments for the quarter. 

    How will you celebrate your accomplishments in 2023? 

  • 4 Things my Goals Taught me in 2022 about how to be Brave in 2023

    4 Things my Goals Taught me in 2022 about how to be Brave in 2023

    “I never tied discipline to courage. I never saw the correlation. I guess I should have, since I lack in both. But in all matters- physical, mental, and spiritual- I believe that to live a disciplined life leads to a brave life. We long to be brave in the big moments, in the clutch times, in the times when our backs are up against a wall. But to get there? It’s the everyday. It’s the practice. It’s the steps. It’s the discipline. 

    Annie Downs- Let’s All Be Brave

    I set goals every year.  Do you? You can call them New Year’s resolutions, but I like to call them goals. 

    I had five, well four and a half really, in 2022. The 1.5 was a business goal we set every year- gross revenue and profit margin targets.  We hit the profit margin and missed on the gross revenue. I set out to PR in a half-marathon and missed it by about 9 minutes, but I was somewhat happy with my performance given I had the flu a week before I ran it.  One was a writing goal that I fell short on.  And the last one was to read 52 books- averaging one a week- for the year. 

    I set two new process, or habit goals to get me on the right path of reaching these. One centered around how to start a consistent morning routine.  This routine wasn’t perfect, but it helped me read 53 books this year- the one goal I made. I formed a new habit there and it steered success. 

    So what have I learned from the misses and makes in 2022 to tee up 2023?  Here they are: 

    1) One a day.  You can see several trends from the picture of the list of 53 books I read in 2022, but I’ll point you to just one thing.On the last day of the year, my 53rd book listed is the Bible. I did not read it all on December 31st (in fact, I didn’t read anything on the list in just one day). I used an app called Bible In One Year to guide me through reading the entire book over the course of the year.  It took about 15-20 minutes every morning every day. Yes, I missed a morning or two here and there, but never got behind enough to need to do more than two days of reading in one day.  I hit this goal because I did one thing once a day every day of the year.  It got to the point where if I didn’t do this pretty much first thing every morning something felt immediately off for the rest of the day.  It became like going through the day without brushing my teeth.  I felt weird and kind of gross.

    And as it turns out that I’m learning from the first book I’ll most likely finish in 2023, Super Genes, our habits of wellness not only help us achieve our goals, they also can shape and reshape our genes. I’ve always believed that the behaviors I model will shape my kids, but science is also informing the fact that the behaviors we commit to not only can alter our own genes, they also very much shape the genes that we will pass on to future generations. Fascinating stuff! 

    2) Quit.  I hit the reading goal as well because I did something I’ve never done before. I quit reading three books I started. One wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, one was written terribly, and one I just totally disagreed with. Wired to power through to the bitter end on everything whether pleasant or not, I realized life is too short to read bad books. They will make you miss your goals and that isn’t worth it. It also isn’t worth it because it violates my next point. 

    3) Enjoy it. I love to read. And the outcome of my reading also informs a lot of the work I do.  If you aren’t enjoying at least some of what you’re striving towards, why are you doing it? Sometimes enjoyment comes in the process of doing something and sometimes it comes in the outcome, and hopefully in both, but if you can’t be clear about why you are doing something and how it is going to contribute to your overall wellbeing, in my opinion, it isn’t worth doing. Goals are really hard to achieve when you’re miserable trying to achieve them. You won’t stay the course. 

    4) Just because the calendar rolls over doesn’t mean we should stop striving towards the same things.  My hits and misses have taught me that the “rhythm” as Annie Down’s calls it is what I need to focus on.  Call it courageous or call it discipline like she also calls it, but I’ll be leaning into the word “brave.”  I think she does too given the title of her book.  I need to be brave in my habits by committing to them fully.  Everyday. Then, most likely, the outcomes will happen. I need to realize when these commitments aren’t serving me and those around me well to either quit or pivot.  And I need to always focus on enjoying both the journey and the outcomes it leads to.  My goals for 2023 won’t change much from the goals of 2022.  Instead, I’ll keep striving for the things that are always important to me, my family, and my team by being brave in the everyday. 

    What did you learn in 2022 that will shape you for 2023? 

    Like this post?  You may also like: 

    4 Steps to Fanatic Leadership Discipline

    Out of the 53 Books I read this year, here are my top three must reads: 

      1. Bittersweet by Susan Cain because it echoed and solidified my thoughts on living in the AND so well.
      2. Run Rose Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson because it so enjoyable- see #3 above. 
      3. Misreading Scripture through Western Eyes by Brandon J. O’Brien and E. Randolph Richards because it made me reexamine some of my thinking. 

  • 2022 Book of the Year

    2022 Book of the Year

    “Gratitude became my door to grace.” 

    Alexsys Thompson The Power of a Graceful Leader

    This year at Horizon Point, we launched a training curriculum called Illuminate, seeking to further our mission to innovate the workplace through people practices and bring light to all that we do.  

    The training idea came about from our work seeking to help organizations adapt in a rapidly changing workplace environment and from our personal experiences of trying to do the same. 

    What seemed to resonate the most in all the concepts taught was the practice of gratitude. Each participant was given personalized thank you notes and encouraged to write one note a week for a year in order to express gratitude to people that had an impact on them. 

    We realized there wasn’t enough gratitude going around. That’s why it was so impactful, because there was a scarcity of it instead of an abundance. 

    And with this, we realized that in order for gratitude to go around, we needed to focus on what it means to be a Graceful Leader and hold ourselves and others to Graceful Accountability.  We needed to help people see that they could exist in a place where accountability and expectations can and should coexist with empathy and grace.  

    That the duality of things actually improves upon all things.  As Aleyxs Thompson quotes Richard Rudd in our book of the year, grace is “careful without being fearful, caring without being overbearing, candid without being cruel.” 

    Our book of the year states that “grace is the key to sustained happiness, more fulfilling work, and performance that impacts the world” and that gratitude is the door to accessing this kind of grace. 

    So with this, we decided to present two gifts to you this year in appreciation of your partnership with us.  You’ll find our book of the year- The Power of a Graceful Leader, as well as twelve personalized thank you cards.  We hope you will use the book to fuel your thoughts on leading with grace. Chapter three specifically focuses on how gratitude is the entry point to grace. As we move into 2023, we hope you’ll write one note a month to someone to whom you owe an acknowledgement of your gratitude and how they have impacted you.

    One is the means and one is the end. Our habits form us and shape who we are becoming. We hope that the habit of gratitude will mold and shape us all into graceful leaders. 

    We are incredibly grateful for your partnership with us this year.  Thank you for trusting us to walk alongside you to impact people and workforce practices. Many blessings to you and your family during this joyous season!