
Welcome back to the Water Cooler! This month, a great question for each of us to consider on an ongoing basis. We're into May of 2023 this year. What is the year and your life demanding/asking/requesting of you - so far?
Is now the time for you to play big, or is now the time for you to play it safe? It's not necessarily binary, either. If you've been hanging out on the skinny branches taking chances and stretching yourself, perhaps now is the time to play it safer. It can be tiring hanging out on the learning/growing edge. Sometimes we need to pump the brakes, or even just lift our foot off the gas for a while while we gather our resources for the next push.
If on the other hand you've been hugging that tree hard, maybe there are one or two places in your corner of the universe where you could be a bit bolder. Take something more of a (calculated) risk in order to grow, challenge yourself and serve your people even better.
I had a lovely client I'll call Susan a while back. We worked together for over a year and I was thrilled when I stumbled on the perfect Christmas gift for her. I'm pretty terrible at finding gifts for people, so believe me when I find something good, it goes into the "thrilled" category. It was a mug with the word "BOLD(ER)" on it.
What was great about this mug? Susan was never going to be a bold person. She's a quiet, thoughtful powerhouse of a petite human. But was the situation she found herself in in her workplace requiring her to be bold(er)? Absolutely. So a perfect reminder for her around how she wanted/needed to show up in order to better serve her team and her organization.
If I were gifting you a mug this month, which one would you rather? And which one do you need? The Big(ger), or the Safe(r)? Maybe you'd even like one of each...
I would love to hear from you - what's your world requiring of you of late? Simply comment below and let me know!
Many thanks,
Darcy & the team at The Management Coach
Check out our website here
Connect with me on LinkedIn
On the Shelf:
A career coaching client espied a copy of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance on the bookshelf behind me during a Zoom call, and asked me what I thought of it. I saw the author Angela Duckworth speak at a Rotman event back in the before times. According to her research, grit is not a fixed attribute. I'm not 100% convinced, but give it a read if you're interested - Ms. Duckworth is a very well-educated researcher with degrees in neurobiology, neuroscience and psychology from Harvard, Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania.
There's a chapter on parenting for grit which may be helpful for you if this is something you're working on with your children. While I don't have kids, both my parents but particularly my mother encouraged my sister and I to be independent and to figure things out - which likely contributed to my acute level of determination - and my general level of grittiness. It's that nature/nurture thing again...
At any rate, lots of ideas to explore. Enhancing your level of grit may help you in developing your bold(er) muscle...
Is now the time for you to play big, or is now the time for you to play it safe? It's not necessarily binary, either. If you've been hanging out on the skinny branches taking chances and stretching yourself, perhaps now is the time to play it safer. It can be tiring hanging out on the learning/growing edge. Sometimes we need to pump the brakes, or even just lift our foot off the gas for a while while we gather our resources for the next push.
If on the other hand you've been hugging that tree hard, maybe there are one or two places in your corner of the universe where you could be a bit bolder. Take something more of a (calculated) risk in order to grow, challenge yourself and serve your people even better.
I had a lovely client I'll call Susan a while back. We worked together for over a year and I was thrilled when I stumbled on the perfect Christmas gift for her. I'm pretty terrible at finding gifts for people, so believe me when I find something good, it goes into the "thrilled" category. It was a mug with the word "BOLD(ER)" on it.
What was great about this mug? Susan was never going to be a bold person. She's a quiet, thoughtful powerhouse of a petite human. But was the situation she found herself in in her workplace requiring her to be bold(er)? Absolutely. So a perfect reminder for her around how she wanted/needed to show up in order to better serve her team and her organization.
If I were gifting you a mug this month, which one would you rather? And which one do you need? The Big(ger), or the Safe(r)? Maybe you'd even like one of each...
I would love to hear from you - what's your world requiring of you of late? Simply comment below and let me know!
Many thanks,
Darcy & the team at The Management Coach
Check out our website here
Connect with me on LinkedIn
On the Shelf:
A career coaching client espied a copy of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance on the bookshelf behind me during a Zoom call, and asked me what I thought of it. I saw the author Angela Duckworth speak at a Rotman event back in the before times. According to her research, grit is not a fixed attribute. I'm not 100% convinced, but give it a read if you're interested - Ms. Duckworth is a very well-educated researcher with degrees in neurobiology, neuroscience and psychology from Harvard, Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania.
There's a chapter on parenting for grit which may be helpful for you if this is something you're working on with your children. While I don't have kids, both my parents but particularly my mother encouraged my sister and I to be independent and to figure things out - which likely contributed to my acute level of determination - and my general level of grittiness. It's that nature/nurture thing again...
At any rate, lots of ideas to explore. Enhancing your level of grit may help you in developing your bold(er) muscle...