One Year Later

Around this time last year, I posed a question to all of you: What if we shifted our focus from "culture" to "community" in the workplace? Culture may describe what connects us in our shared tasks, but community is what binds us through commonalities and diversity. It’s the shared pursuit of building the future, serving others, and investing in relationships that truly forms a community.

Now, almost 52 weeks later, I want to thank you for joining me on this year-long writing journey and for being part of my community. Your encouragement and the comments you’ve left on LinkedIn and Facebook have meant the world to me.

Reflecting on the Journey

Here’s a look back at the themes and insights we explored over the past year:

• Creating Community
  We began with the idea of fostering community—whether in the workplace or beyond—through belonging, hospitality, and the concept of the Upside-Down Community Leader. This model taught us that to gain, we must serve; to receive, we must give; true greatness comes from humility; weakness can be a strength; and leadership is rooted in service.

• Hope, Humanity, and Humility
  Hope was described as the faint glimmer on the horizon that keeps us moving forward in love. We explored humanity through the Hebrew concept of hesed, which combines love and loyalty, encouraging us to honor others without expectation. Humility was framed as an ongoing practice of growth and self-awareness—seeking to understand, practicing gratitude, admitting mistakes, and serving others. Lastly, we discussed the “fabric of love” through helpfulness—paying attention to opportunities to empathize, acknowledge truth, and act when needed.

• Embracing Change
  Change is often challenging for communities, as it introduces the unfamiliar and displaces the old. We explored how understanding people’s emotions during change is crucial for acceptance. The Change Formula (D x V x F > R) provided a framework to help communities not just endure change but thrive within it.

• Listening as Leadership
  Viewing the community leader as a Chief Listener became a key theme. We delved into managing conflict through emotional regulation, connection, and reasoning, and emphasized listening as one of the most valuable tools for advancement.

• Building Trust
  Trust was identified as the foundation of leadership, and we drew parallels to how bees use pheromones to encourage unity and followership.

• Facilitation
  Leaders often act as facilitators, and we explored their various roles, even offering a go-to script for navigating group dynamics effectively.

• Nurturing Followers
  We examined how followers evolve through the Tree Cycle: seedling, adolescence, disgruntled, and mature. This concept of “Greenthumb Leadership” helps leaders understand the growth stages of their team members and adapt accordingly.

• The Deep Ocean Model
  We compared followers' underlying beliefs to deep ocean currents that shape surface behaviors. Leaders must address these hidden beliefs to drive meaningful change, rather than just reacting to visible actions.

• Case Studies
  To ground our discussions, we looked at real-world examples:

  • Microsoft and Greenthumb Leadership

  • Google and the CAMP Method of Motivation

  • LinkedIn and the Leadership Growth Lattice

  • Pixar and the Deep Ocean Model of Belief and Behavior

• Leadership Insights from History
  During election season, we examined Lincoln’s leadership style and reflected on what happens when a vision gets lost—and how to find it again.

• Looking Ahead
  As the year drew to a close, we discussed the importance of aligning with our values, fostering trust and vulnerability for breakthrough innovation, and envisioning leadership in an era of remote and hybrid work heading into 2025.

A Moment of Reflection

This post is both a reminder of where we’ve been and a celebration of the work we’ve done together. Every Monday, I’ve sought to share something meaningful to inspire thought and action for the week ahead. Writing has been a journey of self-discovery and growth for me—you have to put your own oxygen mask on first. It’s rewarding to reflect on the themes we’ve woven together and the leadership insights we’ve uncovered.

Leadership is not accidental; it is purposeful. Like any skill, it requires study and practice. My hope is that you’ve found value in this journey and that it’s sparked your own growth as a leader.

Looking to the Future

What other leadership topics would you like to explore? What resonated most with you this year? What lessons will you carry forward into next year?

As the author, my greatest reward is knowing that you’ve been served. Thank you for being part of this community.

Immediate, Real Time, Practical Ways You Can Make Yourself Indispensable This New Year

As a New Year is upon us yet again, here are a few ways over the last decade and half that I have both seen and practiced becoming indispensable in career, professional life and in organizations.

These are immediate, real-time, start today ways that can transform you as a leader and any organization, business or side-hustle attached to you!

1. Have a “Show Up, On Time, Ready To Go” Mindset:  Number one on the list and quite possibly the most important (because all the others need to have this underlying mindset) is the ‘show up’ mantra.  This means being on time, being present; attuned, prepared and ready to go in mind, body, and attitude.  The meeting starts at 10am; you’re in the room or logged on by 9:55am.  Can’t fit everything into your normal day; now you’re waking up earlier to get a sound mind, body and spirit about the day.  Your friend, coworker or significant other is trying to connect and share something important with you; you’re purposefully putting down the phone, making eye contact and actively listening.
   

2.  Review a meeting agenda ahead of time and find places to add insightful value: First, hopefully an agenda is prepared before any meeting you plan to attend - at the very least - the objective or ‘why’ of the meeting.  If one isn’t prepared, volunteer to prepare one.  Once you get the agenda, review it and write out one or two questions related to the topic. For example, “How would we respond to the problem if we expanded/reduced our approach?” “How might the customer see this situation from his/her perspective?” “How does this information/update affect our timeline or goal?”
   

3. Listen for ideas coming out of discussions: Ask, “Is this idea something we should move forward on as an action item?” Many wonderful suggestions and actions go unfulfilled because no one moved them forward or wrote them down. If no one is scribing action items, offer to do so.
   

4.  Offer to write down discussion ideas on a flipchart, virtual board or open a GoogleDoc for everyone to see/share: There is true power in the visual art of writing things down for a group to see especially in the brainstorming process.  Show your ability to lead a discussion by leading the capture of ideas.  Ways to expand discussion ideas: group like ideas together, prioritize ideas/groups, define if one has to come before the other or can they work in parallel, decide if there are action items from this discussion/flipchart. 
   

5.  When problems emerge look for the root cause and ask the 5 Whys: Learn how to pause and contemplate root causes to issues and errors and not jump at the surface level symptom. As a younger professional myself, I find that I have to be more patient – my instinct is to go fast and furious, but I have found that digging a little bit deeper shows maturity and strategic thought.  Ask, “Would it help to ask why 5 times to see if we can identify the root cause here?” Likewise, if a group moves on past the problem without any clear resolution, you can revisit it by asking, “Is everyone clear on the approach we’re going to use to solve the problem, because I think I missed it?”
   

6. In decision making identify the criteria to make the decision:  So often groups can become confused about what decision to go with or that there is only one criteria to be used to decide like time, money, ease of implementation, etc. which is usually not the case. Most decisions have/need multiple criteria to be answered before the best decision can be made. Help them use an array of criteria to build a better decision.  You will stand out for your ability to use various perspectives and criteria to come to a sound and good decision.
   

7.  Play Devil’s Advocate or the challenger: Warning: Before you use this make sure you don’t have a room full of challengers - if you do, do the opposite and look at number 8 below. If you are in a room where groupthink is happening, playing the challenger helps to expand the diversity of thought.   “As the Devil’s Advocate let me ask: What could go wrong here, or what does the downside of this look like?”
   

8.  Link and connect ideas together:  This helps people show your ability to ‘advance the thinking’ and give credit where credit is due. Use ‘and’ statements, not ‘or’ statements. Think in a 1+1>2 capacity. “I think Brad’s and John’s ideas are both terrific and, if put together, could be the approach we’re looking for.”
   

9.  When trying to change people’s minds try creating a Case for Change: Have you ever walked into a meeting or your boss’s office with a great idea, shared it with them, only for them to dismiss it or flat-out reject it?  Why does that happen? 70% of the time if you’re trying to change an idea, plan or project, it will fail.  Why?  Because we haven’t created enough dissatisfaction or pain with our people and with where the project/idea/plan currently is.  We have to create a ‘Case for Change’ to help communicate why the change must occur.  Here are some questions to ask in your Case for Change: What is the background for the change? What has led up to this need to change? What challenges or problems are we facing in the current situation that will cripple us if we don’t begin addressing them today? What is the impact of these challenges? What will happen if we stay the same? Why should we act now? What are we going to have to let go of and why? What will the change require? What will it cost us to change? What will it cost us if we don’t change? How will we know when we have succeeded?
   

10.  Give time for Deep Work: A friend and colleague last year recommended I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work.  I did and it really struck accord with me.  I have to admit, I often find time for Deep Work naturally, but it was fun and exciting to see someone define it!  Deep Work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.  We need leaders that create more time and space for Deep Work.
    

11. Become the Pirate: Steve Jobs made famous the line: “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.” Jobs looked for the pirate in all his team members, as Peter Sander, author of What Would Steve Jobs Do, points out. “But it wasn’t enough just to be brilliant, and it wasn’t enough just to think different. Steve’s pirates had to have the passion, the drive, and the shared vision to want to delight the customer with a perfect, game-changing product.” How have you become a pirate for that new project - looking outside the box, in the box, or through the box to offer something truly creative, passionate, and game-changing?
    

12. Embrace Your Workhorse Muscle: “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration,” Edison said. Find a person, who knows how to roll up their sleeves, put their nose to the grindstone, dig in and efficiently produce high caliber work time and time again and you will bear witness to the next innovative leader. In That Used To Be Us, Thomas Friedman notes, “The time for mediocrity is over.” If that’s the case we have to become very good at shutting out noise, including our internal negativity, having laser-like focus on the task at hand and pushing through to get the job done. All the best quotes, great philosophies, soapbox pronouncements mean little if you can’t just get the work done. If you’re looking to refine this skill refer back to #10 & #1.
    

13.  Invite the expert to share their opinion: Show your ability to share your value by letting others share theirs.  “Anne, you have lots of experience with this project. Could you share your thoughts on how we should proceed?” If a meeting needs a specialist or Subject Matter Expert, find one.  Collaboration is about having the courage, humility and vulnerability to increase the seats at the table and hear from many different people.
    

14. Develop Rhetorical Sensitivity: “We are all rhetoricians,” my former college professor of classical rhetoric used to say. What he was saying is that whether we like it or not all of us have mouths and perform actions daily that either cast a good light or a bad light on ourselves. Going a step further, rhetorical sensitivity is the idea that we must always be aware of who, where, and what we are talking about and have the proper emotional and social intelligence to modify our content and approach to appeal to our audience.
    

15. Strive for Level 5 Leadership: Famously described in Good To Great, a Level 5 Leader demonstrates humility and professional will with fierce resolve to do what is best for the company, not the leader. The Level 5 Leaders build enduring greatness in their organizations; they set up their successors for success, and talk passionately about their companies and others, but not themselves. They are ordinary people producing extraordinary results. 
     

16. Advance your thinking: Always be asking yourself, “How am I advancing my thinking.”  How am I advancing my thoughts, my skills, my talents, connecting ideas, producing something new?  This is also a great philosophy to have when working with a group or team.  “How do we advance the thinking here?” “What are we doing to move the ball forward?” In many meetings and board discussions, I find that we just spin on the topic and hear from everyone in the room and adjourn. At the next meeting, we rehash what we talked about at the meeting before. Did we actually advance the thinking? Use #13, #9, #8, #7, #6, #5, #4, #3 to advance thinking in the group.
    

17. Give Praise: We don’t encourage enough.  We should high-five, celebrate and praise people for good work.  You don’t have to go overboard; you don’t have to fake it.  Just really find delight and freedom in praising another human being.  Over the course of the next week, try to send a text a day to someone, either professional or personal, that says “I see you and I celebrate your success.” Obviously, use your own wording and get specific!

So, as we embark on this uncertain and unpredictable year ahead as the last few have been, hopefully this list doesn’t require Covid to be gone or for you to work at a 9-5 in the office.  The list above can be administered regardless of global challenges or local politics.  I’ll leave you with one of my favorite “New Year, new me” African sayings: Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.

The Leaderverse

Welcome to 2019!  I’m excited to boot up the blog again and hope to be pushing out more content this year with a focus on leadership.  

Growing Millennial Leadership is a passion project for me and like many things, it needs to evolve.  This year many of my topics will be around real practical leadership skills, as well as the innovation, grit and resilience that is needed to not just be a good employee, entrepreneur or leader, but also to lead a healthier life.

“There’s nothing new under the sun,” and with that in mind I’ll be “dusting” off many of the New Directions inspired thoughts on leadership.  New Direction, was a family-owned firm that did great work with large and small organizations. I worked there for six years. My mother started the firm in 1985 and has since retired.  I developed a lot of my millennial and leadership insights and thoughts at the firm as I began to grow Harrington Brands.

The theme for Growing Millennial Leadership this year is around whole leadership or what I’m calling the Leaderverse.  All things leadership are covered in the Leaderverse. Innovation, creativity, motivation, failure, communication, problem solving - all in the Leaderverse.

As I continue to go around and work with many organizations, I don’t think we have a millennial problem or even a generation problem.  We lack good leaders. What’s more, we lack leaders who have the tools in their tool belt to make the best out of their teams. Many of these young leaders want to be good at their job, they just never went to school to be a leader.  

My hope is that by sharing the many tips, tactics and tools I have learned, both while at New Directions and even in my current role as the executive director of the Bennington Regional Chamber of Commerce in Bennington, Vermont, that I can help those young leaders build up their tool belt.  

So join me in 2019 as we explore this Leaderverse.

XPollination (Ep. 9) - Leading Where You Stand in 2015

Check Out Management Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Survival of the Hive Leadership on BlogTalkRadio

Matthew Harrington is joined once again by co-author and partner Deborah Mackin as they discuss emerging trends, hotspots and pitfalls in leadership in 2015.  Join the dynamic duo as they bring practical, real-world experiences into the podcast and provide insight into where leadership is heading in the New Year.