by Deb Boelkes
How would you rate 2020 in the scheme of things? For some folks, 2020 has been a tremendous boon for business. In fact, it’s been the best of times. For others, this year has been devastating in so many ways. For them it’s been the worst of times.
Perhaps 2020 will go down in the history books as Charles Dickens described in The Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.
Many of us faced both the best and worst of times this year. No matter how this year impacted you, it’s more important than ever, as the year comes to a close, to reflect on the intentions we originally set out for ourselves and assess our personal performance. Did we actually accomplish our goals or did we allow the pandemic to defeat us?
I believe one’s success is not so much about “how” we go about achieving our goals—because we can never fully anticipate the obstacles that may get in our way. Rather, our success depends on what we do to achieve the “why”—the intent—of our mission. When we understand and focus on achieving the “why”, we make better decisions in real-time to flexibly maneuver around obstacles as they happen.
This has certainly been a year full of unanticipated obstacles for many of us. By assessing our performance against our underlying intentions, we might find that we have accomplished more than it seems on the surface.
In his book, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, retired US Marine Corps General Jim Mattis talks about the importance for leaders to clearly define the intent of each mission:
In the Corps, I was taught to use the concept of ‘command and feedback.’ You don’t control your subordinate commanders’ every move; you clearly state your intent and unleash their initiative. Then, when the inevitable obstacles or challenges arise, with good feedback loops and relevant data displays, you hear about it and move to deal with the obstacle. Based on feedback, you fix the problem.
The critical information is your intent, summed up in the phrase “in order to.” This is key to unleashing audacity.
In drafting my intent, I learned to provide only what is necessary to achieve a clearly defined end state: tell your team the purpose of the operation, giving no more than the essential details of how you intend to achieve the mission, and then clearly state your goal or end state, one that enables what you intend to do next. Leave the ‘how’ to your subordinates, who must be trained and rewarded for exercising initiative, taking advantage of opportunities and problems as they arise.
Evaluating my own performance for the year against my desired end state, I’m actually quite satisfied, even if it seemed like quite a struggle to maneuver around some pretty enormous roadblocks much of the time.
I hit my target number of Amazon book reviews for my 1st book, The WOW Factor Workplace: How to Create a Best Place to Work Culture. I published my second book, Heartfelt Leadership: How to Capture the Top Spot and Keep on Soaring—even though every planned book launch event was cancelled. I interviewed even more “women on top” than I intended to interview for my upcoming third book, Women on Top: What’s Keeping You from Executive Leadership? —even though most of the interviews were conducted via video conference instead of in-person. And as of now, I am on target to complete the first draft of both my third book and an unplanned fourth book, Strong Suit: Leadership Success Secrets from Women on Top, thanks to all those executive interviews being so compelling and chock full of heartfelt lessons learned. In the end, it seemed very appropriate to create a two-book series.
The one big miss for me this year was the number of keynote speaking engagements I intended to deliver, mostly due to the number of corporate and industry events that were simply cancelled, at least until organizations figured out how to conduct such events virtually. The good news is, although it seemed rather awkward and clumsy for me at the time, I became quite adept at delivering both pre-recorded and virtual keynotes using video conference technology. That “how” never even entered my mind when I originally defined my goals for this year.
Back when I was working in Fortune 150 corporations, I recall being told during performance reviews that one of my greatest strengths was dealing with ambiguity. Perhaps that gift has enabled me to make it through this year more-or-less unscathed.
Life is all about learning and growing. Regardless of how you set about accomplishing the goals you originally set for yourself for this year, I’m betting you learned a few new things about yourself. As a result, perhaps you’ll be an even more forgiving heartfelt leader in the coming year.
In closing, here is my Christmas wish for you: May you continue to grow more adept at dealing with the unexpected. May you strengthen your ability to adapt, improvise and overcome whatever obstacles may land in your path. May the insights you have gained this year enable you to become more like the kind of leader you wish to be. And, if you don’t love what you do, may you have the courage to move on to something else that will give you more fulfillment so you can serve as a greater inspiration to others.
And finally, may the year ahead bring about the best of times for you.