Where is the Reset Button?

I’m coming up on the end of a break from work. Our company closes during the week of the Independence Day holiday. I am a big fan of this tradition we have mostly because there will not be a pile of Slacks and emails to respond to when I return to the office.

This company and my job are great. We are building something truly special that is and will continue to change the world of work. We are growing rapidly, and our customers are benefitting from our efforts.

I am getting ready to return to work, but how could I approach things differently to increase my impact and live into my best self more often? I became curious about this.

Agile Best Self Principle #12: At regular intervals, reflect on how to become your best self, then tune and adjust.

I just passed one year at my position, so it seemed like a good idea to do a bit of a retrospective like any self-respecting agilist. This break afforded the opportunity to spend some time in reflection, and open my mind to new ideas.

In analyzing the results, it became clear that my mindset is the culprit. Over the past two plus years, and more acutely in the past year, I had developed a play-it-safe, survival-first mindset. Not altogether a bad idea, but not one where my best comes through. In this mindset, I often find myself in the middle of a lot things, and not out in front leading. Adding to this is the weight of everything that is happening in the world around us, which makes it harder for our best to show up every day.

The reason for this, I have determined for myself, is that accountability and autonomy are not aligned. This is a problem I can work on fixing. I need to turn this into a mindset where I can effectively and authentically lead, which should translate into more personal satisfaction and better results for those I get to serve. I have identified where these imbalances exist, and can work on fixing them collaboratively. In other words, I will go after what I really want, which is to be able to have a better understanding of my role and purpose in the organization, and I know I can take care of the rest.

The second thing is that I have chosen over the past year to reduce my contribution to this community. This is also caused my best self journey to take a backseat. Before I took this new role, contributing to this community helped shape my journey and made a big change possible.

Agile Best Self Principle #7: Investing the time in yourself is the primary measure of progress.

I can address this in a mashup of Principle 7 and 8. Investing time in this community going forward, which is a focus on being more. Making time to write, create podcasts, and maybe even some new workshops (are you ready, Michaele?) will be on the backlog.

Looking forward to it!

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