Pausing for impact.
Thoughts on aligning effort, values, and priorities
A few years ago, my wife and I realized that despite both being combat-tested, expertly trained operational planners, we routinely found ourselves throwing together personal travel at the last minute, scrambling to keep the household running up to snuff, and having birthdays, anniversaries, etc. sneak up on us. We would flex our flow charting, decision-tree making muscles only at work, pouring our attention to detail into our professional lives, while our life together felt like an afterthought in terms of planning and cognitive bandwidth. We knew that our partnership should be a planning priority (if not the top planning priority), but we were not executing that way. So, we instituted a yearly “couple summit”. We committed to planning and preparing for it like we would a work event - with defined inputs, agendas, and outputs. For the summit, we travel somewhere for the weekend and reserve a space to work (ideally somewhere that sparks a little joy). We move through our agenda and have meaningful conversations about our partnership, priorities, values, and plans.
What surprised me about this summit experience was what I found most valuable. Prior to going, I thought that the outputs of the summit would be the most valuable – synchronized calendars, budgets, itineraries, etc. To my mind, those documents would be the enduring tools that would give us more alignment, harmony, and efficiency as we navigated our life together. What ended up being the most rewarding, stimulating, challenging, and deeply valuable parts of the summit were the conversations that we had about values and priorities. Those conversations served to clarify our shared purpose, giving us a powerful balance of unity and autonomy to go out and execute on our shared priorities.
I share this story because I believe that this type of practice - dedicated planning, review/check-in, and conversation with a trusted accountability partner - can help us as leaders get a sense of whether we are living in alignment with our values and positively contributing to the impact areas that matter most to us.
Dedicated Planning
Protecting time and mental space to think carefully about values and priorities is critical. Particularly important is to protect this time before things in a new role or venture get too hectic and all consuming. Once things get rolling, it will be very hard to pick your head up and prioritize your efforts if you haven’t defined priorities or values ahead of time.
Review / Check-in
Periodic performance reviews are a business norm. A similar rhythm can be used to review and check-in on performance related to values and impact priorities. The object of a review is to get a sense for how you have been executing on your stated priorities over a period of time, while the object of a check-in is to pause and check-in with yourself about how you are experiencing the present balance of effort, impact, etc. This check-in style reflection can help motivate change, reinforce the fact that pursuing your values/impact priorities is energizing and fulfilling, or it can help you course correct.
Accountability Partner
Accountability partners can serve many functions that are helpful in maintaining the course. They can be sounding boards, can give encouragement, and can help provide the right amount of social pressure. They can keep us honest or they can save us from being overly self-critical. An accountability partner can be a romantic partner, family member, friend, or colleague. It is critical that you say out loud to your accountability partner precisely what your values and priorities are and that the accountability partner is someone who you communicate frequently and honestly with.
As we seek to pursue our values and make an impact, employing a regular practice of dedicated planning, review/checking-in, and conversation with a trusted accountability partner can help us assess how we are fairing and course correct when necessary. It’s worth noting that while I’ve focused this piece on impact and values at work, I felt the benefits of this “summit” experience both personally and professionally - the sense of alignment and intention in multiple aspects of my life was energizing and affirming. I offer these as a set of ideas to inspire your own approach to showing up with intention as a leader and as human.
Onward,
Emily
About this newsletter: A Human Endeavor is a newsletter that I write about leadership - it is imperfect. For me, it is an exercise in reflection, clarification, sharing, learning, growing, and being of service to others.
Thank you for reading.