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…).

  • 5 Minute Memo for MOPs

    5 Minute Memo for MOPs

    Are you a MOP? MOPs are Managers of People, and whether you are leaning into long-term remote work or reacclimating to an in-person work environment, here’s a 5-minute memo to help you stay on track. 

    1. Go easy — on yourself and others. There’s been a shakeup. Remember that we are all People First. We are People First in the sense that we are not ______ first (insert managers, leaders, bosses, etc.), and we should be People First in the way we manage and lead others. 
    2. Be inclusive — Everyone has a different story. Remember to acknowledge, respect, welcome, and celebrate differences. Try these 4 Exercises with yourself, your team, and/or organization. Use your influence to create a psychologically safe workplace. 
    3. Be flexible — Have you ever needed to leave work early to pick up a child from school? Ever struggled to schedule a doctor’s appointment around your work hours? Do you or someone you know live with depression? Flexibility feeds physical and mental health for you and your team and directly supports organizational productivity and success.  
    4. Train, develop, coach — It can be easy for MOPs to be laser-focused on people management and miss opportunities for people development. Think of the old adage: You can’t see the forest for the trees. Let’s be mindful of the forest and dedicate some time to training and developing our team members. 
    5. Evaluate — Continuous improvement requires consistent, meaningful evaluation. What’s working well? What isn’t? Evaluation doesn’t have to be complex or formal; it can be as simple as stopping by a coworker’s desk and asking for feedback on a recent communication or project (note to self: time this right, when they’re not swamped, and depending on your work relationship, you may want to give them a heads up). 

    Looking for more resources for MOPs? Subscribe to The Point Blog 

     

  • 3 Ways to Think about levels of Pay + A “Bonus”

    3 Ways to Think about levels of Pay + A “Bonus”

    As you can tell from our previous post on all the hiring incentives that are out there now, it is a job-seekers market. 

    A recent LinkedIn update titled “Power shifts in a tight job market” summarizes what employers are doing to lure people to their open positions:  

    Employers eager to fill positions are offering more to attract talent — and they aren’t just upping pay or showing more flexibility — they’re also training workers and taking more chances on people who don’t meet traditional qualifications. “No experience necessary” roles have spiked by two-thirds compared to 2019, and posts offering starting bonuses have doubled, according to new data from Burning Glass Technologies. Meanwhile, minimum compensation requirements for people without college degrees are up 19%, per a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey.

    There are multiple factors impacting the supply and demand for labor. But it’s not just filling positions, it’s also about keeping people in positions.  Particularly acute in production and manual service workers,  a Conference Board report cites strong retention challenges: 

    As we think about what can be done to impact the recruiting and retention challenges of today, it may be wise to think about how you think about pay. Obviously, employers are increasing their wages. Historically, as you can see from the chart below, wages have not kept pace with productivity, so rising wage rates may help to impact this equilibrium. 

    But until we think about pay differently, honing in on what each level of pay actually provides, we may not be able to effectively impact the outcome of increases in pay on worker recruitment and retention. 

    Adam Grant, in his podcast WorkLife provides a framework for three ways to think about wages in the episode titled “Why It Pays to Raise Pay” and I’ll add one more as a bonus that he and his guests allude to: 

    1. Living Wage: Living wages provide what people need to be able to provide for their basic needs.  Living wages allow people to meet the lower-order needs found in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that you see below.  They provide for survival, and to a certain extent safety and security. (Other factors may impact safety and security needs being met beyond wages, as for example, safety not being present in a domestic violence situation of a wealthy family.) 

     

    Maslow would tell you in order for people to move up the hierarchy to things that provide motivation at work, you have to at least meet these lower order needs.  By and large, pay is what provides for this.

    What do you think a living wage is where you are? You can find out here: https://livingwage.mit.edu/

    For example, here is Alabama’s data: 

    Some of these numbers were quite surprising to me.  Be sure you look at the information on how these rates are determined here.  Although you (and I) may not agree with all the things included in this living wage, what I find most fascinating here is this data seems to imply that most people with children really need two incomes to reach a living wage by combining their incomes. In addition, it is evident through the data how much of an impact childcare costs play into the variability of a living wage.  

    On a personal note, a ministry we’ve started through the Neighborhood Christian Center is helping one single mother provide a bridge for childcare expenses right now until she can see if she qualifies for a government subsidy program to help pay for their childcare.  She has three young children and no support from their father.  The cost for the three of them to attend daycare so she can work would require her to make $13.50 an hour JUST to cover daycare costs. Her pay rate right now is $10.00 an hour.

     

    2. Fair Wage.   A fair wage, I simply define as a market wage rate by position.  Grant defines fair wage as “a living wage plus an amount that reflects an employees’ value for the organization or in the labor market.” 

    What is a fair wage where you live based on the positions you hire?

    Just to give an example, here is the market wage in Alabama for a Production/Manufacturing Operator as reported from one of the subscription market wage sources we use: 

    It is interesting to compare these market rates to the living wage rates.  Oftentimes, it appears as though market or “fair” rates are actually below living wage rates.  

    3. Generous Wage.  A generous wage Grant defines as a shift in thinking to what the purpose of pay actually is.  He says, “Instead of thinking of pay as a way to incentivize people, think of it as a symbol of how much you value them.  When people feel valued, they add value.” 

    It’s easier to get concrete data to define what a living and fair wage is, but a generous wage is so ambiguous.  It means different things to different people and to different organizations. 

    Grant provides a couple of concrete case studies in the podcast that can help you think through what generous wages look like. For example, PayPal committed to paying generous wages and defined it through measuring net disposable income, which is the money you have leftover after taxes and paying for all essential living expenses.  The threshold they set for employees was having 20% of their take-home pay be in this category.  

    It can’t be understated, however, that in order to work, generous pay has to be combined with a bonus. And that bonus isn’t monetary. 

    4. Necessary Bonus: Treat people holistically.  In order for a generous wage structure to work, it has to be predicated with the mindset of believing in people.  This isn’t throwing money at a problem in order to fix it.  That won’t work. One of Grant’s guests on the podcast states that companies who don’t or can’t get on board with this mindset, “Don’t believe in people. They don’t have the faith in a person’s ability to do a good job in their motivation and in their competence. And of course, in public companies, there is a tremendous emphasis on the short term and a lot of executive’s compensation is tied to short term performance….. Another thing that gets in the way is mediocrity is a lot easier to pursue than excellence.” 

    As she says, it’s easy to say, “Pay as little as you can.” That doesn’t take a lot of thought. But thinking about “how high you should go? How much should you empower your people?” takes a lot more work.

    I hope this framework of thinking about pay provided here through the WorkLife podcast will, at a minimum, provide some food for thought for you to pursue excellence instead of mediocrity. 

    What will you do next to lead your company’s compensation policy? 

     

    Author’s Note/Opinion:  

    I am a capitalist at heart. This isn’t about paying people wages that do not allow for-profits or distributing wealth in a socialist way, it’s about paying wages that maximize profits and it’s about businesses taking ownership of generous pay, not the government being in charge of redistribution of wealth.  

    If businesses took ownership in paying people at least a living wage and hopefully seeing how profits can be maximized with generous wages, the government wouldn’t have to interfere in the market to impact the widening income gap in America.  I believe that much of what is going on now when it comes to why people are sitting out of the labor market due to making as much or more on government subsidies, is a result of wages not having risen past the recession rates of 2008-2009 and that was more than ten years ago now.   

    It’s time for businesses to take an honest look at their role in the problem instead of pointing fingers at everyone else and trying to put out a fire that has been kindling for a long time with a shot in the dark sign-on bonuses and other short term bandaids to entice people to work but that totally negate the need to do the hard work of building better workplaces where people actually want to work and stay. 

    If you listen to the entire WorkLife podcast here, you’ll see that one company engaging in this type of excellence around pay mindset has seen their revenue triple, their customer base double, and their workforce growing by 70%.  Taking a thoughtful look at your wages just isn’t the right thing to do for people to be able to earn a living, it’s the smart thing to do when it comes to maximizing your business’ potential. 

     

  • To Offer or Not to Offer: Pros and Cons of Sign-on Bonuses Post Covid

    To Offer or Not to Offer: Pros and Cons of Sign-on Bonuses Post Covid

    Last week my colleague, Taylor, talked about the rise in hiring incentives that we are seeing in 2021. As of April, the national unemployment rate was 6.1%, and the rate in Alabama as of April was 3.6%, almost half of the national average. With the unemployment rate so low, employers who are now able to ramp their businesses back up post-Covid are finding it impossible to hire. So as Taylor mentioned, many are turning to offer sign-on bonuses or opportunities to win a prize such as a car in order to entice individuals to apply. It sounds great in theory, but what are the pros and cons of sign-on incentives that organizations need to consider? 

    Pros: 

    1. Sign-on bonuses get people in the door and on the clock. It’s definitely an attention-getter. Who wouldn’t like a few extra dollars in their pocket just for accepting a job? Promoting positions with a sign-on bonus is a great way to increase your application pool and find hires that may be needed just to keep your business running. 
    2. It can help you win over the competition. In the current market, employers are all fighting over the same candidates. What can you offer that the competition can’t? A higher sign-on bonus may be the tipping factor in which position a candidate applies to and/or accepts.
    3. It’s a one-time hit to your budget. Many employers are offering sign-on incentives right now because the market is so tight, and because they are trying to attract candidates away from an inflated unemployment payment. While offering a sign-on bonus may be putting a tight squeeze on many small businesses’ bank accounts, it’s a one-time hit to the financials. Once the hiring market shifts, which many predict will happen once states start eliminating the additional unemployment federal funds, employers will be able to cease the sign-on incentives and get their budgets back on track. 

    Cons: 

    1. Collect and bail. If your sign-on incentive is payable immediately upon hire, there is nothing keeping a new hire from collecting the sign-on bonus and walking away. If you defer payment until an employment period has been met (i.e. payable after 60 days of employment) that may be a deterrent to candidates if they can get an immediate payout elsewhere.
    2. Decreases employee morale. Offering sign-on incentives to new hires that weren’t available to current employees might not sit well with some. For example, you promote an employee to a shift supervisor and increase their hourly pay to $20/hour and then you hire an external candidate to fill a second shift supervisor position and pay them an hourly rate of $20/hour with a sign-on bonus of $500, how do you think that’s going to be viewed by the internal candidate you promoted? 
    3. Creates an unrealistic expectation for the future. While an employer offering a sign-on bonus views that as a one-time payment, many employees view it as a precursor of things to come. When review time comes around, they may expect an additional bonus or a pay increase equivalent to compensate them for the bonus they received the previous year. In other words, while the employer views the sign-on incentive as an “extra” many employees view it as part of a whole, including that amount when they calculate their annual salary. 

    While I’m not arguing for or against sign-on incentives, organizations need to evaluate the pros and cons when determining if it’s the right thing for the organization. While considering the option of offering sign-on incentives, organizations should also discuss how to incentivize current employees to help recruit talent. If your organization doesn’t currently offer referral bonuses, maybe that is an option to try first. The best candidates often come from current employees. 

    Is offering a sign-on incentive the right choice for your organization? 

     

  • For Lucy

    For Lucy

    We have had the privilege of doing work and life with Lucy Orr as a company and a family over the last couple of years. She has helped us with so many things at Horizon Point and MatchFIT. She performs each task with excellence, professionalism, and a joyful spirit.  She brings this same sense of self when keeping our children. She brings sparks of joy and excitement into their lives.  We will be forever grateful for Lucy and for all she has done for us.

    In reflecting on all Lucy has taught us (and as I still try to selfishly and actively plot ways to keep her from leaving us in the fall to study at the University of Virginia), I want to share the hope we have for her. This hope I have for myself and my team at home and at work and for the people in my community.

    That hope is living in the AND.

    Dear Lucy,

    A couple of weeks ago while you were in the throes of AP exams to wrap up your high school career, I walked into a beautiful room, with a beautiful view for a meeting about education in our community. Your uncle called the meeting. Your dad was there. I hugged a few of the men around the table and one – in all forms of the gentleman I’ve always known him to be – pulls out a seat for me.

    I’m the only female in the room. I’m the only one under the age of 40 in the room.

    Although this dynamic is not uncommon in my professional life, I wonder: Why am I here?  Why was I invited to sit around this beautiful table with this beautiful view with these wildly successful men?

    It’s not that I’m intimidated to be around the table, just perplexed by the invitation. I’ve got a little over an hour to do what I think is to sit and listen before I need to get in the carline to pick up the kids from school.

    The school system leader is invited to share with the group the good and bad of what is going on. As your uncle states, our community can only be as strong as our public schools, and so begins a conversation about test scores and demographic makeup and what things can be done to move the needle in the right direction.

    These men talk about ideas, big ideas. These men talk about solutions, big solutions. Novel solutions. And my God, I’m so glad to be around this table with people who think, and think big, and have resources at their disposal to deploy big. I’ve needed a conversation like this. One that isn’t mired in the logistics of getting shoes on kids in the morning and invoicing clients and making sure all the ships run exactly on time so we can all make it to the next thing. A conversation that is about making an impact.

    I respect these men around this table, and maybe I’m here because they respect me and my voice, or at least my voice when it comes to education. As we dive deeper into what has been done wrong in the past that has caused some of the problems the school system faces now, I question whether or not we need to play on a different board all together when it comes to moving forward in a positive direction. What would we do if we broke the “rules” and what results would that achieve? They all seem to listen. I also question what I don’t understand, and as your dad states, sometimes progress isn’t happening quite simply and literally because a left turn is too dangerous.

    Our conversation is interwoven with demographic trends and the questions that these trends seem to invoke. How do Hispanic kids perform compared to white kids? How do white kids perform compared to black kids? Why do black and Hispanic kids perform worse than white kids? How is parental involvement different based on demographics? Why aren’t there many middle-class black kids in our district? What does that mean? I sit and listen more, but I can feel myself getting agitated by the nuances of the conversation.

    I’m also, like the gentleman sitting next to me, realizing we’ve gone overtime on this meeting. “What time is it,” he asks me. I flash the time on my phone clock to him while I think I’ve got about four and a half minutes before I have to leave to make it to the carline in time.  The ships have to run on time.

    To try to wrap the meeting up, the gentleman beside me thanks the school leader for his time and gives his word that he will support what is necessary to make a difference in the district.  He’s done it before and I know he and his peers around the table will do it again.

    But the conversation seems to be ending on a note of hopelessness, in particular about kids in the district on the margins – the Hispanic kids and the black kids if we want to make it easy and lump everything into demographic subgroups.  As the school leader said earlier in the meeting, the district performs on par or better than surrounding districts when it comes to white kids. It doesn’t with the minority subgroups.

    As the gentleman beside me closes with a story to illustrate this, particularly with black students, I feel the need to speak up again.

    “Well, if all of us around this table would help one black kid, maybe the story would be different. It’s hard. But it’s worth it.”

    I also want to say, this isn’t a black or white or Hispanic issue so much as it is a socio-economic issue and the conditions that have created a society of haves and have nots that largely fall along racial and ethnic lines. We all want to boil things down to the metaphorical and literal black or white because it is so much easier. Our brains can draw easier conclusions this way. The school district’s charts are so much easier to understand this way. OR is easier than AND. AND is gray.

    The school leader looks back at me and says nothing. I think he knows I’m being for real because he’s seen my husband literally help one black kid through their mutual involvement in youth baseball.  Not just once, but for years over years.

    And with that, the meeting is over. People rise from their chairs and I dart out the door for carline.  I can do this meeting AND make carline in time.

    School pick-up for us includes picking up one black kid on the “other” side of town from the bus so he can eat a meal with us, do homework with us, and play ball with us. This is the routine three or four days a week in the spring.

    After this meeting and school pick-up, we run by your home to drop off fresh strawberries and notes of encouragement from the kids about your AP Exams.  One of my kids’ fondest memories from the previous summer is picking strawberries with you.

    “Lucy needs some fresh strawberries,” Andrew says after I tell him that you can’t babysit this week because of your tests, so we go get strawberries.

    Our black boy- that you of course know as Cortez- asks if he can go to the door too in order to deliver the strawberries.

    “Sure,” I say.

    Your precious mother smiles the smile so unique to her. It is the purest expression of her giving spirit. I realize you get the spirit of excellence and joy both from her AND your dad as the boys bound out of the car towards your door with the strawberries.

    She thanks them profusely as your brother waves from inside. I can see Andrew swell with pride as your brother speaks to him, and I think again, man if my kids could just turn out to be half the kind of people you and your siblings are, I’d count us as beyond blessed.

    The boys bound back into the car and Cortez says, “Man, I love that house.”

    He didn’t even walk inside.

    “Yeah,” Andrew says, “It’s the best, even the backyard.”

    And we drive on towards homework and dinner and baseball. Cortez drives on with us with a little bit more exposure than he came with when he got in the car.  To your mother’s smile, your brother waving, and to a home that he “loves” not just because of the looks of it, but because of the way the people that live there made him feel.

    ***

    A couple of months ago, I traveled to Turkey with my dad.  The trip was exhausting and invigorating all at once.  I learned a lot, met a lot of neat people, and quite honestly experienced a ton of anxiety about being gone from my family and work for that long. I worried about not being present at the baseball and soccer games, about not being there to put shoes on in the morning before school, and about making sure everyone was picked up from the carline and the bus stop on time. About leaving a work project that had dragged on forever thrown on my staff with a “Good luck, figure it out.”  And all this hit me in the middle of the night in Turkey.

    “Why am I here?” was something I asked on that trip over and over again too.

    The journey through Turkey followed some of Paul’s missionary journeys. So as I sat on a bus through the country, I read Galatians and Ephesians as I was traveling through what was the region of Galatia in the first century while heading towards Ephesus.

    I read, “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control….If we live by the spirit, let’s follow the spirit.” (Galatians 5:22, 25) and I think of you. You display these fruits through and through.

    I continue to the book of Ephesians and find Paul in Chapter 5 talking about how wives should submit to their husbands and in Chapter 6, he goes on to talk about how slaves should obey their human masters.

    As we drive through the countryside, I stand in awe of how Paul traveled this route that will take us about three hours by charter bus on foot. How long did it take him with just his legs? I stand in awe of his commitment to spreading the gospel, to encouraging people to live by the fruits of the spirit, AND I can reflect that the words in Ephesians are a product of Paul’s time and culture and to the audience in which he was writing. And while most of what he wrote here is quite likely progressive at the time of his writing, I can realize that the fruits of the spirit if we listen to them would tell us owning another human being isn’t living them. I can realize that the standard that governs my marriage is and will be different for me and my husband then what Paul instructs. Submission isn’t necessary for either one of us if we seek to live in love through the fruits of the spirit.

    I can appreciate AND question. I can apply within context AND still stand in awe of a person’s journey and message.

    AND so can you.

    You can stand in awe of the material you get to learn in college AND question it and the people that present it at the same time. You can take your studies seriously AND immerse yourself fully in the college experience that isn’t academic and learn quite a lot as well.

    You can rest AND you can work hard. You can work hard AND play hard.

    You can respect me AND disagree with anything I’ve said before or now.

    In a time when everyone and everything seems to be so divisive, we can all realize that not everything- or really anything- has to be polarizing.  We can choose AND instead of OR.

    You’ll also be here one day, in your mid-thirties wondering at times, Why am I here? Why am I at this beautiful table?

    As I think about the anxiety I experienced on the trip to Turkey, I know it is because the notion of AND is being challenged in my mind, in particular in this stage of my life.

    You can’t be a good daughter traveling with your dad for over a week AND be a good mother and wife. You can’t experience the world in all its fullness by visiting far off places AND be respected as a responsible mom. You can’t be a good mom and wife AND run two businesses.

    You can’t be a good Christian AND question Paul’s words to the Ephesians. You can’t sit at the table with a bunch of men talking about big picture things and be excited about how this impacts community outcomes AND make it to carline in time.

    You can’t respect these men AND question things around their table. You can’t raise good kids of your own AND try to help raise a child that isn’t biologically yours, that has experienced a world that you can’t even imagine.

    But a blog post you wrote last summer hangs in my office to remind me that I can live in the AND. As you said:

    The last relationship that I noticed this summer impacted me the most deeply was the significance of family in work. I babysat for Mary Ila’s two older children regularly throughout the summer to give her a few hours at a time to focus on work, so I was able to learn from the intentionality with which she balanced these two things: work and family. This experience has shown me the blessing of valuing family. By constantly thinking of fun things we could do that her kids would enjoy or clearing entire days to spend time with them, she showed me that it is possible to work hard while prioritizing family. This balance definitely looks different for everyone, but it was so helpful for me to see such a wonderful example of this aspect of pursuing a career. 

    You’ll never know how much these words meant to me.  So I want to remind you of them too.

    ***

    You will go to the University of Virginia soon, and I’ll have to admit, I’m a little jealous.  My dad took my family there when I was in middle school and I stood in awe at what Thomas Jefferson created in Charlottesville.

    When I heard you were headed there, my thoughts drifted to Andrew who gravitates towards activities that involve his strong spatial abilities. Like building things and drawing things and playing chess.  And I think: we must go there so my kids can visit you and stand in awe too. And even though this child who is still struggling mightily to read on grade level- who thinks in numbers instead of words- I wonder, maybe he will be able to attend school there one day too, architecture school maybe.

    When we do visit you, my kids will stand in awe of what Thomas Jefferson built AND they will learn about how much of his wealth- and quite honestly much of his pleasure it seems- was built on the backs of people he owned, people who look like our friend who comes to do homework with us, and play ball with us, and see your sweet mama smiling on the porch with us.

    What if he lived during this time instead of today, I wonder?  What would have become of him?   What will become of him now? A child who does not have a problem with reading cognitively, but who did not know most of his letters halfway through kindergarten because kindergarten was the first time he was exposed to the alphabet. A product of a situation where no one sang the ABCs to him and all the men in his life except my husband are in jail or dead.

    But maybe.

    AND maybe he will go to the University of Virginia one day too. My boys from two different worlds could go together.

    ***

     

    Like me, an opportunity for a seat at beautiful tables will come more easily to you than it will for others because of your privilege. Because of where and who you were born to and the opportunities that it provided you to succeed before you even made all the right choices to do so.

    But I can’t help but think that it’s also the AND that puts us in the room, at the beautiful tables, with the beautiful views. With the best people and the best opportunities.

    It’s that I am a female AND a mother AND a strategic thinker AND someone who has great respect for the gentlemen sitting around me so I can challenge some thinking in the room. I’m in the room too and as I’m challenging others’ thinking, I’m challenging my own at the very same time.

    It’s the realization that Paul and Thomas Jefferson and all of us around beautiful tables are AND. We can be generous and kind, impactful and well-intentioned while at the same time also a little flawed in our thinking. We can stand in awe of those around the best tables and AND question at the same time.

    AND may not be what gets you a seat at the beautiful tables, but choosing AND will keep you there.

    ***

    Choosing AND instead of OR doesn’t mean you won’t need to find your no.  And it doesn’t mean compromising your values.

    It may mean saying no to the people that tell you you can’t choose AND, even when these people are the ones who love you the most.  It may be saying no to the voice in your head that tells you OR would just be so much easier than AND.

    Study OR go have a good time? No, that doesn’t have to be a black or white choice.  You can choose the AND by planning accordingly to do so.

    It will one day likely mean saying no to the commitment you are expected to take because you are a mom to be able to say yes to the commitment that you know God designed you to take because He lit a fire inside you about it. Like saying no to working a booth at field day so you can spend that morning providing leadership coaching to four budding entrepreneurs. And it may be about saying no to a person you highly respect that wants you to take on a commitment you know you just can’t because your family needs you.

    AND the beauty of the true kingdom is that your NO is and will be someone else’s AND.

    It will take constant discernment and prayer to figure out the difference between OR and NO for you. It will take the guiding of the spirit.  It’s hard. But it’s worth it.

    Lucy, I can’t wait to see the far-reaching impact you will have on this world. Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to live an OR life. Live in the AND. Listen to the Holy Spirit AND let love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control continue to lead you to the AND instead of the OR.

    We love you!

  • 4 Ways to Cultivate Openness to Experience to Enhance Innovation and Leadership

    4 Ways to Cultivate Openness to Experience to Enhance Innovation and Leadership

    “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain

    I have recently returned from a nine-day trip to Turkey.  It’s been almost five years since I’ve traveled internationally, so I was excited that a trip that I thought would most likely not happen this year due to the COVID pandemic in fact did.  

    I was able to travel with my dad through Educational Opportunities, which is a company he has been a host with for a few years.  The trip gave us the opportunity to be a part of a group that explored the country and learned about the history behind prominent places in the early Christian church. 

    As excited as I was to get to take part in this opportunity, I was somewhat dreading it as well.  With three kids, two of which are in the throws of spring activities and one who is at the age where all you do is chase him, it makes leaving the country a logistical nightmare for my husband without help. In addition, having one work project that had gone haywire and two more that needed to be wrapped up, led me to be apprehensive about leaving for an extended period of time.  I was exhausted preparing to be gone by the time I got on the plane to exit the country. 

    Nevertheless, travel is and most likely always will be an opportunity for me to grow and learn.  I need to set aside time to do it. The trip reiterated for me the importance of building the muscles of openness to experience and what benefits it can bring to our people interactions, work performance, and leadership skills. 

    Psychology Today describes openness to experience in this way and articulates some of its benefits: 

    In the field of psychology, openness to experience refers to our measurable individual interest in art and beauty, our attention to our sensations and feelings, our intellectual curiosity, our preference for variety, and our active imagination. Put simply, it is the drive to explore novel aspects of human experience and the willingness to consider perspectives different than your own.

    Openness is also an essential trait of successful innovators and creatives throughout history. With an appreciation of diverse perspectives and a willingness to try new things, you can better navigate daily challenges and discover novel solutions. Studies even show that openness to experience positively correlates with increased job performance and more creativity.

    Openness to experience is also positively correlated to leadership.

    Travel is one of the best ways to cultivate “novel aspects of human experience and the willingness to consider perspectives different than your own.”  But you don’t have to travel halfway around the world to strengthen your openness to experience muscles.  Here are four steps to thinking about travel as a way to grow your openness experience and thus your ability to innovate, think creatively, and lead:

    1. Travel the place you call home.  No matter how small the place you call home is, you most likely have not seen it all.  There are streets I’ve never driven down in the town I live in.  I drive the same routes seeing the same things every day, as most of us do.  Take a day to go a different way to work, or school or the store, paying close attention to the novel surroundings.  Pick a place that is close to home where you’ve never eaten, never shopped, or never explored and go there instead of where you always frequent.  What new thoughts do these new places bring to mind? 

    2. Travel through a good book.  Opening your mind may just mean opening a new book as often as you can.  Choose books about places you’ve never been, people who are different than you are, and on topics, you’ve never explored.  What can the book teach you about something you’ve never experienced and where does it prompt you to explore further?

    3. Travel through new relationships.  One of the most fulfilling things about our trip to Turkey was our local guide, “Art”.   Art’s knowledge of Turkish history, as well as current events, was unbelievable.  Raised in a conservative Muslim home where she often felt controlled and stifled, she was the first person in her family to receive a college education.  She spoke openly about her opinions about politics, religion, and the history that has impacted the country she calls home.  She referred to us all as “family” and was an open and active listener when it came to both the group’s questions and opinions that may or may not have mirrored her own.  Despite so many differences in my experiences and hers, I found so many parallels as well, and I will continue to reflect on her impact. 

     

    Art in action in Ephesus.

    New relationships could be with people that live in your neighborhood, or it could be with someone halfway around the world. Our relationships with the literal neighbors we have that are in different stages of life than we are have been invaluable.  Just as valuable has been the relationships I’ve cultivated with “neighbors” around the world; I had the privilege of attending graduate school with a diverse group of people. One individual was a Fulbright Scholar from Oman.  She now lives back in Oman and has three children.  My two oldest children are now pen pals with her oldest two.  The dialogue between children living a world away, with a different faith background, and in a very different culture has prompted wonderful questions from my children that I know will grow their openness to experience whether they ever get the chance to visit the Middle East in their lifetime or not. 

    What “neighbor” across the street or around the world can you correspond with regularly?  What can you gain from their insights and experiences?

    4. Travel to a faraway place.  What place(s) in the world would you suspect are the most different from your day-to-day world?  If time and resources allow, I’d encourage you to go there.  Whereas Turkey was more westernized than I had envisioned, there were so many unique aspects of the country that exposed me to new landscapes, people, food, architecture, and ways of operating.  The call to prayer five times a day regardless of whether we were in Istanbul, a city of 18 million people, or in a rural town where most people are farmers was an opportunity to reflect on a cultural norm in a country that is 99+% Muslim all while exploring the foundational places of the early Christian church.  It provided a very unique way to reflect on religion and faith and the way in which both have shaped history and current events. 

    As travel opens back up across the globe, how can you set aside time and resources to make a trip full of learning and reflection happen for you? 

    Novel experiences allow us to reflect on new norms and ways of being that could be relevant to our world and open us to broader possibilities. You don’t have to travel around the world to be open to and experience something new and for the journey to be fun. 

    What new place will you visit soon?