Welcome to this week's edition of Friday Favorites: a weekly curation of reflections, resources, and invitations on leadership and life.
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Happy Friday!
How are you doing as we enter back-to-school season and approach what is, for many, the busiest time of year?
Last week, we talked about gifts to our future self, in the form of refilling the coffee machine the night before, or considering how a commitment will feel in the moment and not just in the future.
This time of year, we can also give gifts to our future selves as teams and organizations —specifically, identifying key priorities for the end of Q3 and for Q4, in a way that is realistic and achievable.
In recent years, I've noticed that teams have become increasingly exhausted and stressed as we move through September, October, November, and December. . . leading to a full-out sprint, with a massive pile of priorities to be accomplished by "the end of the year." 😅
As leaders, our opportunity is to:
Get clear on what the true priorities are
Effectively communicate these priorities to and with our teams
Talk through cascading priorities as a team: what our top priorities are, and how those cascade down to division, department, team, and even individual-level priorities
Ideally, our list of key priorities should involve a small handful of most-important things (the word "priority" used to be singular) rather than a stack of 76 unfinished items that have accumulated over the course of the year.
What do you think?
Any gifts that you give to yourself, as a leader —or to your team, as we approach the final segment of the year?
From here, we will move to our list of favorites below.
Thank you, as always, for being part of this community and for reading.
“In a two-part study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, researchers found that people who regularly engage in “positive reminiscing” using vivid mental imagery report higher levels of happiness and a stronger capacity to savor meaningful moments. These individuals fared better than those who focused solely on the present or relied on physical memorabilia."
Do you know about this cute weather app? I just learned about it this week (thank you, Kels!).
What are my true priorities between now and the end of the year?
What are our team's true priorities between now and the end of the year?
What do we need to de-prioritize, in order to make them happen?
What is the impact of these priorities on other (individuals, teams, departments, etc) —and have I communicated accordingly?
Partnering Together To Elevate Your Leadership
If you're interested in talking more about what it could look like to work together elevate the leadership capacity of your organization this fall, please feel free to drop me a note. Here's how we often work with organizations:
Partnering to deliver our signature in-house leadership development experience for leaders, managers, new managers, and up-and-coming leaders —this is an interactive, experiential, heads-on, and cohort-based leadership experience.
Leadership and executive coaching and strategic advisory with C-Suite teams —including 1:1 coaching as well as facilitated conversations, retreats, and offsites.
Mission, vision, and values development, alignment, and refinement for both early-stage and mid-stage companies.
1:1 coaching for high-integrity leaders who want to continue to grow as leaders, increase their impact, and in some cases navigate a career transition.
Please feel free to reply to this email anytime, if you'd like to talk more.
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