We Are Better Together

I'm a lot more confident and grounded. You know, you may have an intuitive feeling that you've got these skills because you've had some successes in the past, but when you work through the principles and values and the leadership maps, you come to know it. It's organized. It's put together. It just grounds you, I think, in a confidence and a commitment to and an assurity you wouldn't have had otherwise.

I appreciate both of you as coaches. Your perspectives have been great for me to see different ways of approaching and learning from the information we've received. It's so much more meaningful on such a deeper level. I have a hard expressing this, but I have an idea. This (approach) is so much broader and more inclusive to a whole-person approach than anything I've ever seen. And everything else and leaves everything else is way back in the dust somewhere. So, thank you for your efforts in creating this for us.

So, over the weeks of this journey, I've identified opportunities where I have to grow. I've enjoyed the sessions. As I've grown, I'm not able to quantify or identify how this works. But I know it works. I find value in it. And I would do this journey again. I would do all the sessions again because it's been enjoyable.

My takeaway from this is that I have a higher level of confidence in who I am, and I believe it. The I AM statements - really understanding my leadership style and some of the attributes that I have—also recognizing the ability to bring out the derailers of those strengths, recognizing them and allowing myself to be more courageous, and pursuing the positive aspects of my leadership strengths. So, much more confident in who I am. I know who I am as a leader.

The biggest takeaway for me has been that, like anything else, there are skills associated with achievement in anything, right? And that they take time to develop. They take intention and effort. I think for me, personally, a lot of what I think I have to decide is, now that I have greater familiarity with what the skills are and what the habits are that I want to develop as a leader, is what is the context in which I want to develop my leadership. Where do I want to lead, (and) why?

 I've seen a character change of growing confidence and some competence that had waned. I think I've come out as a different person. I think that this training has really shaped and given me some models to lead by, to govern, to drive, to influence. Not only, of course, myself, but also how I interact and treat and build others. This has been a replenishment, so to speak. So I like, yeah, you know, the Phoenix Rising. I think that's very appropriate. This has really been a significant enhancement and a betterment for me, and so, yeah, thumbs up, plus. 

I am definitely more confident, more intentional, more methodical. I feel like I have some tools available. I couldn’t even tell you what the tools were (before). And now, I know what they are – where to look for them, where to find them, how to use them. I’m probably still tweaking them for the best way to use them. You know leadership is intentional. It’s a journey. It’s excellence. It’s a lifelong pursuit. So, lots of good stuff here.

Going through this, you realize there's so much more to leadership than just leading and saying, I've done this before; follow me. I can get us to the end. There's so much more. I don't know why this isn't taught in school. This seems so important. Because there's so much to go into. And there's so much valuable information not just with leadership but also your interest, like looking inward on yourself as a person, which I believe is separate from leadership in a lot of ways, but it helps you focus on both at the same time, which is pretty astounding to me. 

I didn't know what I was getting into completely. I was excited about taking the course and developing some of my skills. I was pretty excited about that. But I was confused. I was very confused after receiving the survey and the results. And when we went over them, I was still confused. And then, as we started driving into these, I saw direction. I saw opportunity. And through this, I've read several books, and I believe it just enhanced my overall thought process about leadership, and the tools that we have to move forward, and a lot of things. So, I took a lot out of it. I have a long way to go. It's about people and about becoming our best selves. So, I'm grateful for the journey.

I think this has made me realize that I have not been as good a steward of my leadership talents as I can be with daily incremental 1% Improvement. And being much more intent, having much more intent in recognizing what I'm doing and how I'm impacting people and all of those things. And it's not just because I want to be a leader or because I want to do something. There is a purpose in failing. If I'm not doing much more than I have and that I am, then I am not fulfilling my purpose as a leader.

So, I always call myself a student of leadership. And I always will be. And this has really been great. And as it's taken, you know, 30 years of leadership training, and really helped me understand how to navigate it better rather than, you know, just picking a tool and using the hammer to solve every problem, right? We can all find 40 minutes a day. We don't have to play on our phones for 40 minutes or 30 minutes, right? We can figure it out. And that has paid off in dividends. Just going back, somebody said about compounding interest, right? That's exactly what it has been. And I've seen that, a change in myself, and I've seen a change in the people that I lead and how I approach things and people and the way they react to me now, and it's blessings to start seeing that. 

So, I came in this with some specific questions from my leadership experiences in the past. But then, those questions became part of this much larger structure that really go beyond answering those questions and allowed me to connect it back to how things are going in my core. So that's great. This gave me a way to be poised for re-engaging professionally. This is a continuum of leadership development. It's not a stop-start, but with new tools and new perspectives, hopefully, implemented in more intentional ways.

The big takeaway is a significant challenge: we will commit to excellence. Then, on the overall journey, to me, this has been a lot of really interesting material. I'm still digesting and working my way through to apply it, and looking forward to digesting it more and applying it more. 

Overall. Life changing, really life-changing. And changing my whole approach to leadership and, how I view myself and view others, and how I can really bring world-class, excellent leadership to what I need to do.

First, with me, it was looking for clarity, not understanding completely what was going on, but then that understanding came, and then the reward. So the reward is that we learn things. I could say all kinds of things that I've learned about myself and about the journey and about leadership -  then, doing these maps and taking these activities, doing the affirmations. Starting to look at the core principles, the core (purpose) statement, and the missions and the values, all of those. Then, they become challenges. But then they become insightful and, interesting and productive. Because we gain that curiosity. And then we move forward and learn and grow from that. And then the big thing is when anybody goes through this journey, process, change takes place. And that's happened with me, and I appreciate that a lot. And I'm excited to look forward to additional challenges, learnings, and change. 

It's been fun to get an understanding of who you are as a leader, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, and how you work through that golden triangle. It really makes a lot more sense. 

And you are, then, taking that and putting it into action. And so the confidence that brings, and the sense of direction and that plan and how to carry that out. Obviously, it's not something you can accomplish in that 10-week period, but it is something that you can take with you and carry out through your entire life as a leader as you just adapt and adopt these skills in these different traits you have taught us. I really appreciate that.

The Fellowship of this group has been absolutely phenomenal. And I cherish the wall and our friendship and hope this will continue going forward. Rich and Maikel, you're a wonderful resource, truly good friends, and great mentors, and I appreciate it.

When I started out, and everybody has this, we have our own individual insecurities. This course helped me to self-examine a lot and think about things that I thought critically about myself. I am much more secure now with myself than I was when we started. It was interesting the concept of permission; I am where I am, and I am progressing in the right direction. It's interesting because in order to help other people, you have to have some grounding. And you have to be not just comfortable with yourself, you have to be secure with yourself. I'm secure with who I am.

I was excited, started off really strong, I thought, and really, for the first time, really started looking at myself in ways that I hadn't done before, which has been insightful. And it's changed my perspective of myself, how we view others, and how I view the concept of leadership. It's, you know when you learn more, your borders enlarge, which then puts you up against even more that you don't know. It has opened up so much more that I realized that there's so much more to leading others.