I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. I certainly did with my family in Moab.
When this time of year comes, I think about Thanksgiving from a personal standpoint. I pause, think about this last year, and make a list of things I’m thankful for. The extra time away from my normal routine gives me the mental space I don’t normally have.
This is also an incredibly powerful exercise to do while thinking about your work, your employees and your team. If you’re a manager, you can even sync this with your performance reviews. This may be a timely exercise since so many organizations complete reviews this time of year.
How do you do this? There isn’t any one way. It can be as simple as taking 20 minutes and revisiting this last year. Here are some great questions to get you started.
- What were my accomplishments and shortfalls?
- Who was involved and what did they contribute?
- What obstacles arose during the year?
- What did I learn?
- How did I grow?
- Who and what am I thankful for?
You can do this individually or with your entire team. I am a big fan of creating history maps with teams because everyone contributes to the team’s story of this last year. We know stories are incredibly powerful. Individually and as a team, you list what you learned and what you are thankful for.
The benefits of this simple process to you are:
- The mental renewal of slowing down and making sense of the past
- Learning from the past and understanding how much you’ve grown
- Setting yourself up for success in the future (since we know the best predictor of future success is our past and current performance)
- Gaining the power of positivity
- A more cohesive and positive team with everyone participating
- Creating a positive mental framework while you complete those performance reviews
This is a great way to end one year and begin another. We’ll have more on how to accelerate your team’s start to the next year in our January 2018 blog. Happy New Year!
858.735.1300
info@teambuildingforsuccess.com