Wrap up 2024.mp3
Hello and welcome to Unlocking Potential. My name is Emily Petty, and I am the founder of Lead Your Way and the founder of the Unlocking Potential podcast. I help kind, caring, compassionate senior leaders of growing teams stop firefighting by collaboratively creating ways of working that help your team to problem solve, generate ideas, and make better decisions. And in this episode, we are looking very time specific, but this could be at any time you can do this exercise. We are looking at how we can wrap up 2024. So it is December 2024 when I am recording this podcast. But if you're listening at any time, the idea of taking time to pause, taking time to reflect. Taking time to learn from the past is relevant at any moment, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. So why wrap up and reflect at the end of a year? So the past. So what we have individually and collectively experienced shapes how we feel, our thoughts, our decisions, and our actions moving forward. So if you're listening to this podcast as a senior leader or as an individual, as part of a team, I want you to think of this firstly for yourself. What do you need to do to stop, to pause, to process out your thoughts, your feelings, the decisions, the actions, the successes, the failures of the past year in the context of this? But as I say, you can do this in a day or a week.
And if you're a leader of a team, what could that look like for you as a team to collectively notice and to pause and to wrap up and to reflect on the year.
So it's so important because firstly, it gives us it gives us an opportunity to notice what is good. So we have an inbuilt negativity bias and a fight and flight response. That means that we hold on to the negative. So if our our if I asked you initially to scan your year, you might remember some positive things your holiday or some good things. But we remember deep, deep down in our minds the more negative experiences and therefore it's really important that we notice what is good, that we celebrate that, and we appreciate it, that we notice what is good. We celebrate that and we appreciate it. And this is so that we can overcome that negativity bias, bias, boost our endorphins, and help us therefore to find clarity. Because if we're always being stopped by all, we can't try that or we can't do that because that didn't work and we haven't taken time to see the positive or learn from that. What maybe didn't work then we're never going to be curious and adopt a growth mindset. And it is equally important to learn from what has been hard. So noticing what is good also means facing up to the hard stuff and not sweeping it under the carpet or suppressing it. So when we understand the good and the challenging, we are more in effective in noticing what I call our untrue, limiting assumptions we're living by. So if we just hold on to that negative thing. So maybe you tried to run a campaign or do some activity and it didn't work. And if you don't take time to reflect on whether it did or didn't work or why it did or didn't work, when it comes to thinking about doing that same activity again next year, you're going to automatically assume that it won't work in the future. And so that is what I call a limiting assumption. You're assuming that because you failed or your team failed in an activity previously, you will fail again in the future. And that's not always the case. Um, and it is possible that you could succeed, particularly if you take some time to reflect and understand what it is that did not go so well. And then you can put some positive actions forward as to how you might change that in the future.
So when we have noticed what is good and learnt from what is hard, both individually. And I'd really recommend you do this exercise individually as well as collectively. We are more likely to gain momentum, find flow, overcome challenges and thrive.
And I don't know about you, but I hope that is what you would like to have in 2025. So take a moment to notice. This podcast is a chance for you to personally reflect, to think about what your team need, to help them to effectively wrap up 2024, right? So what has happened in 2024 that needs to be processed, celebrated, thought through, learnt from, and what value would. Wrapping up 2024, both individually and collectively bring to you and your team.
So I'm not going to go through some reflection questions here. What I'd love you to do is to join me on the 19th of December. On Thursday, the 19th of December at 1230 to 2 p.m. for a 90 minute workshop, it's £45 for a place and £90 if you send three people from your team and if you register for the workshop, you get a free workbook which has all of the questions that will help you effectively wrap up the year. So in that space, that will be your opportunity to pause. You know what has gone well, what have you learnt and will help you to think about what you will take forward, most importantly, what you'll take forward into 2025 and what you'll perhaps need to leave behind.
So what I'm going to do in this podcast is to help you really think about why this exercise might be so helpful, and what might stop you from taking time to reflect. Because actually, we don't find this easy. It doesn't come naturally to us. And I'm sure you've got a very busy December. All you're thinking about is just getting to that last day of work and switching your computer off and spending time with your family. So we've already said that the negativity bias is strong, and it's really vital that we notice what is good. So that's one tick. That's one reason why we might want to reflect. And I'm sure you can therefore think, well, you know, what do I notice. What have I seen that is good.
We also want to learn from failure. And typically we don't. When we fail, we want to forget. We want to ignore. We don't want to receive feedback. And it's really hard to learn from failure. But even creating the smallest of spaces to talk about what hasn't gone well and to identify how you can put a path forward will really help your team to grow.
And it helps. This is sort of slightly technical, not technical, but sort of psychology speak. It helps your team to become more emotionally agile and self-aware. So when we increase our self-awareness and indeed our self-acceptance, we're going to notice our emotions, be able to own those and work through our emotions more easily. We're going to be able to understand how emotions and our thoughts impact how we show up at work and talk about strategies to help us move forward with them without suppressing or ignoring our feelings.
It's also really important to pause and reflect, to take that moment, to value and appreciate each other. So this is an opportunity for you to thank your team, to appreciate a quality in them, to value what they have brought, even in the hardest of times. And all of this, this collective action, this collective process of reflecting together helps us build trust. And in that reflective action, in asking reflective questions and asking people to share their thoughts and feelings, it helps facilitate what I call effective conversations. So often people talk about difficult conversations or courageous conversations. What we want to do is create as many spaces as possible, as often as possible, where we can speak authentically with vulnerability honestly. and it feels safe. So taking a moment to wrap up the year together in your team is a really, really powerful and simple actually first step for you to take.
And so, as I've said, I'm not going to kind of go over too much. But we know that negative things might have happened. And actually it feels quite hard to bring it up. But we know that if we do bring it up, there are some really positive opportunities. And perhaps you don't want to feel the hard stuff. Perhaps that feels too much to bring up what has been potentially a really difficult year and some of the moments that have been harder.
But actually the biggest thing that would stop us is if you are already emotionally fixed, if you are in that fixed mindset that that either you feel you are not able to change, or you feel that your team are not able to change that it's permanent. That it's fixed. That there's no point in doing this reflection stuff anyway. Or maybe you worry that it's a bit too gushy to give feedback, to value people and appreciate people.
And maybe you're just quite happy putting those difficult or what I call effective conversations, but difficult conversations in a box where they're difficult. And maybe you would rather hope that they might go away.
And then it's important to notice that, in truth, if you take the time out for your team, we're not rewarded for reflection. It feels quite passive. And you're probably sitting listening to this podcast or on a walk wherever you are, and you are worried about all of the things that you have to get done by by the end of this year. But actually the power of stopping and pausing and reflecting will propel you, will enable you to take both individually and collectively, much more aligned action that will have much more impact. It will help you to find clarity for 2025.
So to be clear, we don't want to be in a place where our thoughts and our feelings are suppressed as a team, where things are going offline, um, where you end up with a toxic work culture, perhaps that sort of toxic positivity, you know, everything's shiny, everything's good here. You don't want a team where we're not learning from failure, where we're just trying to sweep it under the carpet, and we don't learn and move and grow forward. And you obviously don't want a team with a fixed, resistant defensive mindset and a team that doesn't feel valued. And you don't want to put off difficult conversations. Because what we know is if we put off those effective conversations, they become more and more difficult. So shifting this culture starts with small moments, small behaviour change repeated at scale. And this is a moment at the end of the year to wrap up the year, to have these conversations so that you can build trust so that you and your team can grow and thrive, feel valued and have effective conversations. So if you start by simply taking time yourself to personally reflect so that you can become more emotionally agile, you will notice how it impacts your energy, your perspective, and your Motivation. And if you start yourself, you will then sort of find the clarity or way forward to help your team to wrap up the year. But I have got you and I am running this workshop on Thursday the 19th of December. It's open for you, anyone listening to this podcast, and it's open to anyone in your team. So it's £45 for a place for a 90 minute open workshop with other colleagues and other people from many different organisations. If you send at least three people, it's £90 for three people. If you want to send more than that, if you want to bring your whole team, drop me a line and we can talk about, um, how I can cost that up to be effective for you. When you register, you get a workbook which has all of the reflective questions. So if one person registers does the workshop, you can also then just go and facilitate that with your team. Um, but this is a dedicated space, a dedicated 90 minutes, which is facilitated by me, where you will be able to reflect on 2024. You'll be able to download the year celebrate. Um, notice what you're grateful for. Um. Think about what you're proud of. Really step into your learnings courageously and in a supportive way. You'll notice also what happens when you pause, what happens when you take that moment to stop? So this is your chance to pause, to be present and to notice. And it's your chance to help your team to do the same.
So as we close this podcast, I am going to read a poem called The Paradox of Noise by Gunilla Norris. And as I read it, I want you to think about what might I be missing? What opportunity might I be missing by not taking time to wrap up 2024? And you might be framing that individually or collectively. And what is the opportunity available to me if I do take this time to reflect and wrap up 2024? The Paradox of Noise by Gunilla Norris.
It is a paradox that we encounter so much internal noise when we first try to sit in silence. It is a paradox that experiencing pain releases pain. It is a paradox that keeping still can lead us so fully into life and being.
Our minds do not like paradoxes. We want things to be clear so we can maintain our illusion of safety.
Certainty brings tremendous smugness.
We each possess a deeper level of being, however, which loves paradox. It knows that summer is already growing like a seed in the depth of winter. It knows that the moment we are born, we begin to die. It knows that all of life shimmers in shades of becoming. That shadow and light are always together, the visible mingled with the invisible.
When we sit in stillness, we are profoundly active.
Keeping silent we hear the roar of existence. Through our willingness to be the one we are. We become one with everything.
