Time With Sands – Reinventing, Not Repairing

I’ve been having a rough few days. I feel like everything in our firm is broken. My employees aren’t doing a good job. Our technology isn’t working. We’re not collecting money. I’m finding fault in everything, and it’s discouraging to me. I can’t even think of one positive thing to try and break out of this. 

It really hit home when you were teaching on the need to focus on the vision and not the problems. I made a list of broken things that I need to fix, but maybe I’m phrasing it the wrong way. Can you help me?

– Samantha L.

The first thing I suggest is that you take a step back and shift out of your potentially negative-charged energy, replacing it with a more positive vibration towards everyone who is working with you. Everything around you might be a mirror for what is going on inside of you. As leaders, it is our responsibility, in fact our obligation, to walk the talk, live it, and reflect it back.

That means being transparent.

It’s critical that you recognize when you are in a low place, so you can request the support you need from your team.  While at the same time, acknowledging that it’s a two-way exchange;  your team needs your leadership in like kind when the going gets rough.

Take some time to reflect – alone and/or with your team – upon other times you have been in this position before, recall and notate what worked in the past.

Your first step is not, however, thinking of a way out. It is centering and going back to the vision. Additionally, it’s about reframing the idea that you are fixing things.

Once you have moved to a higher vibration affording you greater clarity and insight, you can invite your team back into the conversation around shared mission and vision. Then, together, you will be ready to consider ways of radically reinventing, not repairing. Be sure to invite everyone to consider what needs to be done to evolve. Ask everyone to share what is not working. Ask if there are ways to change or enhance – or let go?

Sustainable positive changes in behavior and in the quality of our results start with reframing. So when things go awry, reframe the triggering event or issue as a messenger that the time has come to do a forensic inventory with your team. Especially in VUCA times like these, we are all being invited to not just bring out the Band Aids, but to recreate the vision; that requires we reexamine, reimagine, redirect.