February 2025 Newsletter

Welcome to February, where love is in the air, Valentine's Day and the celebration of Black History Month in the United States! This month, we're celebrating heartwarming stories and a reminder to spread kindness, whether it's to your loved ones or yourself. What's your love language? Keep reading to discover what's blooming this February and you can find lots more via my YouTube channel. By the way, if you are enjoying the newsletter, from now on you can get it by subscribing below:

Last month, I had one of the most powerful weeks ever. It was the week we celebrated the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s. Birthday. On the Tuesday, of that week, I had the privilege of being the keynote speaker at a Dr. MLK, Jr. Day Celebration. Their theme at this gathering of leaders throughout the system was the Power of Belonging. They asked me to deliver some of Carla’s Pearls, while emphasizing the power that is generated whenever the sense of belonging is part of an organization’s culture.?

I was excited to deliver this message as it is one that I believe wholeheartedly. While diversity, equity, and inclusion, are all commercial imperatives in my mind, belonging is indeed the Holy Grail. When people feel like they belong in an organization, they consistently go above and beyond to deliver, consequently enabling and creating outsized productivity and results. An organization will know that it has reached a culture of belonging, when all of its employees therein are speaking in the possessive, “MY company, MY department, MY manager, MY CEO”. Belonging is when people in the same organization can speak truth to power, albeit with grace and respect, but nevertheless, speaking honestly and able “to call a thing, a thing”. Belonging, looks like individuals and teams collaborating on the best outcome for the entire organization or its customers, not just on the performance of one unit. A culture of Belonging is one where everyone is seen and is valued for who they are as individuals, where leaders identify and amplify the individual superpowers to manifest and illuminate the power of the collective.?

I guess I don’t need to tell you how inspired I was to contribute even in a small way to this amazing celebration that started with a gospel choir and ended with one, a first for me at a corporate engagement! If that wasn’t enough inspiration for the week, I ended my week in another powerful way. I had the privilege of being the kick-off keynote speaker for Werfen’s 2025 National Meeting on Saturday morning of that week. I will rarely agree to a Saturday engagement, but something told me to say yes to this one and I am so happy that I did. Their theme for this year’s meeting: The Power of One! By the time that I listened to the opening talk by an amazing executive, Bill Crandell, I knew that my experience this week was no accident. The analogy that they used for the central message was music, explaining how a single string on a guitar can make music, but it is nothing like the music that is created when other strings on the guitar, other instruments and a voice are added. They asked that I include my experience as a musician as I delivered Carla’s Pearls to discuss the Power of One.?

I was ecstatic!!!! Rarely do I get a chance to integrate Carla the Musician, the concert producer, the singer, with Carla the Speaker or Carla the Executive-and I wasn’t going to miss it, especially with this topic. As I prepared for the talk, I reflected on the times when I had teams at work that delivered stellar outcomes to clients. I reflected on the successful concerts that my band, my choir, my background singers and I delivered to sold out concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Apollo Theatre. How were we able to deliver beyond even our own expectations? We had a condition of interdependency, where everyone knew that they not only BELONGED, but our collective aspiration was to not only deliver our personal best, but to inspire the best in each other, thereby raising everyone’s “game”. ?On the stage, there was a musical director, a vocal director, a choir director that sought to leverage the best of the voices, the best of the musicians to deliver a performance that had never been seen or heard before. While every musician, every vocalist was stellar in his or her own right, the power of coming together as ONE, produced a never seen or heard of experience for our audience/customers that night.?

At work, with a leader that sought to “see” everyone and demonstratively solicited everyone’s ideas, thoughts, leveraging everyone’s experience, ?winning outcomes were delivered to clients. Phrases like, “look what WE did for the client”, “we hit a new milestone”, “we have a very happy client”, abounded. The leader made everyone feel valued, and that sense of belonging, made each of us motivated to push, push, push, to deliver our personal best, creating the team’s best, and the BEST outcome for the client.?

The Power of One does indeed go beyond obvious synergistic value, it creates additional alpha, by producing a higher level of contribution from each part that comes together. I humbly submit that it happens when each part wants to come together with the other because it is clear that the individual part will be seen, appreciated, and will be of mutual benefit to belong to the ONE!!! What a week it was and I wish you the same inspiration this month. Take full advantage of everything that your teams bring to the ideation and execution table. See the individual power and weave it into ONE powerful force.?

Go get ‘em!!!

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