Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Personal Development

We all need a little personal development mixed in with our professional and career development. Read blogs in this category for stories and best practices for personal wellness and wellbeing, skills improvement, and  more.

  • Open the Door to New Experiences

    Open the Door to New Experiences

    3,098.0 miles away

    Traveling 3,098.0 miles away from my home to live with the Ward family and shadow Mary Ila and HPC surely is a completely new experience for me. Since February and until May, I have been in the United States. This is the longest time I have ever been away from home and family.

    In one of the training sessions I got to shadow Horizon Point, we did an exercise where we selected two things that motivated us at work, and two others that did the complete opposite. The two that least motivated me from the list were “being in charge” and “being in a constantly changing environment.” 

    When I showed Mary Ila my choices she looked at me and laughed, “Well, you sure kinda threw yourself into a constantly changing environment when you came here!” I answered laughing as well, “I kinda had to do it”.

    Hello I Am Leaving My Comfort Zone name tag sticker to illustrate bravery and courage in going beyond the familiar to new experiences and growth

    It’s necessary

    I am a big routine/agenda kind of girl. I like having a constant routine because that way I feel productive, but I have learned over my 17 years of life that many times we have to step out of our comfort zone to learn and remember some lessons, adapt, and also open paths for opportunities. An important and true thing to bear in mind is that most of the time those lessons and opportunities will only come to us once we are willing to take the step and experience new unknown things. 

    I am so glad that I said yes to Mary Ila’s offer to live here and shadow her and her team because I have surely learned a lot. This experience I would have never been able to have if I stayed in Costa Rica waiting for college to start. Was I scared? Yeah. When I woke up after leaving my parents and brother at the airport, did I feel weird? Sure. Did I know what was going to happen next? Oh, a hundred percent no! However, has it been worth the new experience so far? Oh a hundred percent yes!

    Before I came to the United States, Mary Ila gave me the book Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. There is a quote that I think is all about new experiences. It speaks to the importance of opening the door to new things. “The courage to be vulnerable is not about winning or losing, it’s about the courage to show up when you can’t predict or control the outcome.” You just kinda have to do it!

  • Open the Door to Vulnerability and Courage

    Open the Door to Vulnerability and Courage

    Last week Emily complimented me in her blog post when she spoke of the struggles I have faced in the last year and my ability to persevere through them. (Thanks, Emily!) And she’s not wrong. I have been that way for as long as I can remember; not letting anything stop me or get in my way. My dad taught me to have determination and I am so grateful that he did. But that determination and perseverance go hand in hand with the ability to be vulnerable. And this is where I used to fall short, very short. It wasn’t until I joined the Horizon Point team that I learned it was okay to be vulnerable, to ask for help, and to let others handle the load when you can’t. And during my health struggles in the past year, they have helped carry the load, without hesitation. 

    Vulnerability isn’t a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. It’s the ability to acknowledge when you can’t do it alone, when you made a mistake, or when you fell short. As Brene Brown puts it “(T)he definition of vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. But vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our most accurate measure of courage.” 

    I had to learn to be vulnerable, and here’s what I have learned:

    1. If you show vulnerability, others will follow. If leaders allow themselves to be vulnerable with their teams, it creates a culture of trust and in turn those employees will learn that vulnerability is acceptable, encouraged, and expected within the team. 
    2. Being vulnerable takes practice. It’s not easy to be vulnerable. As Brené Brown says, it takes courage to expose your fears, mistakes, and emotions to others. You don’t know how it will be received and you don’t know what others will think of you. But the more you do it, the easier it gets. Start small and work your way up to the big things if you need to. And sometimes it starts with being vulnerable with yourself. 
    3. How you respond to the vulnerability of others is make or break. As a leader, you need to encourage and accept the vulnerability of others. How you react to the vulnerability shown to you can build trust or destroy trust. Allow for mistakes and use them as learning opportunities. Encourage employees to seek help when they are overwhelmed, be someone that they can vent to if needed (without negative repercussions). Understand that they have emotions and while you may not understand or agree with those emotions, acknowledge them. 
    4. Vulnerability in leadership leads to better, more productive teams. By allowing and encouraging vulnerability and modeling vulnerability to your team, it creates a team that is psychologically safe, that is comfortable raising concerns, mistakes, and ideas, that has a growth mindset. And research shows that teams that are psychologically safe are the most productive teams you can have. 

    I have a wonderful team at Horizon Point that I can be vulnerable and courageous with, that I can go to for help when I need it, can share ideas and concerns with without fear of repercussion, and that I can vent to when I’m having one of those days. And I know that they have by back, and in return, they know that I have theirs. 

    How have you as a leader shown vulnerability and courage to your team? And how have you responded to the vulnerability shown to you? 

  • Open the Door to Communication, Encouragement & Relationships

    Open the Door to Communication, Encouragement & Relationships

    We have an active group text at HPC. It is rare for a day to go by that I’m not receiving (or sending) a text from (or to) our team. The content varies – a funny meme, a word of encouragement, a link to an innovative podcast or book, or a picture of a new pet. The subject of the messages change daily, but the intent does not. The constant stream of communication conveys how we encourage one another, share ideas and help us become a stronger team.

    As with most success stories, our team dynamic starts from the top. Our President/CEO is a servant leader who actively listens, communicates and builds relationships. I’ve often said “she makes me want to be a better person.” She truly has a heart for others and opens her home, her door, her table to everyone. The best example I can think of when reflecting on opening the door to communication, encouragement & relationships is our monthly one-on-one meetings. Those conversations are full of encouragement and enlightenment, and they always leave me feeling ready to conquer the next month along with all the projects & challenges that go along with it.

    How do you improve your communication skills? Check out Lorrie’s tips here:

    Make it Effective … Improve Communication Within Your Organization

    To learn more about building relationships, read insights from Jillian’s blog:

    What’s Relationshipping, & How Do I Do It?

    How do you open the door to communication, encouragement and build relationships? Check out What We Do at HPC, and let us know how we can help!

  • Open the Door. Literally.

    Open the Door. Literally.

    It is 5:34 in the morning, and I am opening my front door to welcome a 17-year-old from Costa Rica.  She’s seen her parents and brother off at the airport to return home, but she is staying. She will be living with us for almost three months.  

    We first met her when she was a sweet seven-year-old who spoke better English than I will ever speak Spanish. Over the course of ten years, we’ve grown to love her family and the prison ministry work they do in Costa Rica. On our trip to Costa Rica last summer to visit, she mentioned she was interested in studying psychology, and I told her she was welcome to come stay with us and see some of our work at HPC before starting college in the Fall.  

    When I share with others our plans to have her live with us, I typically get one of two very different responses.  One: “That’s great!”  or Two:  “Why would you do that?”  The gut response most likely speaks to the person’s level of openness to experience or some other personality trait.  And I appreciate the candidness. 

    And if I’m honest, I feel both of these responses all at once as I literally open the door to my home-This is going to be great! Right along with, What the heck are we doing? All before the sun even comes up. 

    I think she feels the same things too. All at once. 

    And I think such is the way of opening the door to anything worth doing.  Worth learning from.  Opening the door takes effort.  There will be good and bad.  Mistakes and joys.  Excitement and exhaustion. All at once. 

    As we chose “Open the Door” as our 2024 theme at Horizon Point, we were trying to point to just this. The duality of so many things.  Each one of us will spend the next month writing a blog about what this theme means personally.  But I think we all agree opening the door is the way to let light in. And we are all about some light at HPC.  It is who we are and who we strive to be. 

    So today for me, opening the door literally means opening the door.  No metaphor, no hypothetical gesture.  Plan action. 

    And what a pretty morning it was, as the sky opened to light a few minutes after the door was opened. 

    Who or what do you need to open the door to today? 

  • Let’s Get Ready to Rumble! (Embrace the Suck)

    Let’s Get Ready to Rumble! (Embrace the Suck)

    Lorrie kicked off our series on Daring Leadership with her post Braving Trust and Vulnerability. Last week, Jillian discussed How to Be Perfect (Or Not) and the effect it has on Armored vs. Daring Leadership.

    This week I have the pleasure of presenting the topic of rumbling with vulnerability. I am going to need you to take a pause, a deep breath and embrace the suck. Wait, did she just say embrace the suck? Why yes, she did. How else can you describe the feeling of being naked in a room full of people while you bare your soul? In my professional as well as personal life, I have had first-hand experience in this department. I have always walked away from the experience as a better human, but at the time it can feel like anything but “better”. Unfortunately, we don’t grow in our comfort zones, so embrace the suck we must. 

    In Brené Brown’s book Dare to Lead she says that you can’t get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability.

    At the heart of daring is a deeply human truth that is rarely acknowledged: Courage and fear are not mutually exclusive. Most of us feel brave and afraid at the exact same time. We feel vulnerable. Sometimes all day long. During those moments, when we’re pulled between our fear and our call to courage, we need shared language, skills, tools, and daily practices that can support us through the rumble.

    To rumble with vulnerability, I will share part of my story (even as my mind gives me a million reasons not to). I am a woman who has entered the world of Human Resources at 39 years old, 17 years after graduating from college. I am 8 years into recovery and I took the road less traveled for many years. There are days when I show up for work and feel like a kindergartner, but nonetheless, I feel the fear and continue to take the action. 

    I am fortunate in the fact that I work with a team of women who know my story and have practiced acceptance and non-judgement from the very beginning. As an organization we show up and share the good, bad and ugly. We get in the ring, and we rumble. Since we don’t operate as a traditional 9-5, there are days when I shoot a text and say “for the sake of being vulnerable, I am having a hard time with _______.”

    Mary Ila leads us in a way that allows to grow together and to get curious about what could be the “why” underneath our behavior. We are encouraged to lean into our weaknesses and get honest about our struggles. This allows us to feel psychologically safe with one another and to know there is no doubt that we will be supported. Our team has monthly meetings and one on ones where we are led to share honestly about what fits and what doesn’t work for us and how we can grow as a team and invididually.

    Is your workplace a safe space that you can be vulnerable and if not, how can your organization embrace the suck and start to rumble? Need some help starting off? Take a look at this Rumble Language from Brené Brown.