After two years of COVID, we are ready for a breakout year. Here are a few ideas about ways to add brilliance to your growth plans and goals.
Be bold. Peak performance experts talk about the importance of purpose and its connection to achieving higher levels of success. Think about your purpose, what it is, how it aligns with your values and why it matters. With that clarity of purpose, brainstorm the biggest, boldest actions you can take in life and at work to fulfill that purpose. Write them down, make them visible every day, check in with yourself and others to monitor the improvements you are making and celebrate progress, no matter how big or small.
Choose the Great Attraction. With more than 19 million U.S. employees quitting their jobs since April 2021, the Great Resignation is happening across all industries. In this year of brilliance, we challenge businesses and leaders to turn that thinking on its head and see this as an opportunity to brilliantly pursue the Great Attraction.
Be the leader who invests in creating an employee experience that fulfills the intellectual, emotional, social and financial needs of team members. Compensation is important, but learning what really matters to your employees, providing a sense of belonging, connecting them to a greater purpose and fortifying employee programs that inspire people to feel valued feeds the soul of your team, attracts talent and reflects your brilliance to the marketplace.
Invest in relationships. Get out of your home/office/isolation chamber to really talk with your customers about what’s most important to them, ways to deliver greater value and areas in which they need your expertise and wisdom. Clients want relationships with professionals who enhance their businesses. Identify the customers you will invest in building deeper relationships with, set a cadence of contact and put those meetings on your calendar. This is the year to set your goals to create new ways share your brilliance with clients and colleagues.
Understand that positivity prevails. The human condition leans toward fear, negative self-talk and skepticism. To live brilliantly means being mindful of those negative thoughts and finding the courage to challenge them. If you are intentional about recognizing the impact of your words, you can change the way you think.
Connect positive thinking with your purpose to achieve a more powerful perspective that gives you the resilience to excel in all you do. Search out a colleague or friend who can be an accountability partner in this pursuit of positivity. Build a positivity community — associate and collaborate with positive people at work and in life. Who’s in your tribe really makes a difference in your outlook.
Innovate your playbook. This is the year to check out new marketing and sales tools to invest in to grow your business. Work with your sales and marketing leaders to experiment with tools like marketing automation, LinkedIn sales tools, AI, client engagement tools, live chat and live content programming. These tools can help accelerate lead generation performance, sales pipeline/deal flow and customer retention strategies. Most of all, this is the year to share your brilliance through thought leadership and use technology to collaborate with other thought leaders in your field to help amplify your message.
We’ve been stuck in the darkness of the events of the world, and this is the year to shed a little light on your brilliance. I wish you a year of living brilliantly. ●
Judy Bodenhamer is founder and managing director of Client Experience Group
