Positive Team Reflections: Using 2023 to power up 2024.

Calling all leaders! As the year waved goodbye, did you find yourself in some form of introspection and year-end review? How did you inspect the fiscal year? What conversations about wins and challenges did you have? How active were you in visioning and planning what to aspire to for the year ahead? Drawing from real-life Humanized Leader clients (Joe, Lee, Carol, and George), let’s see some best practices on how to examine both year-end and future.

1. How do you conduct a retrospective review with your team?

Joe’s Perspective: The Art of Result-Driven Self-Reflection

Joe is a seasoned business owner, committed to personal development and exceptional results. For Joe, reviewing the year more than metrics; it’s about the impact on his team’s potential. Joe's conversations focus on results, efficiency, and the flawless execution of tasks. He also addresses advances in personal development, emotional intelligence, and team engagement. He doesn't talk in theory, rather focuses on how to improve results while growing the team culture. He never loses focus on the core values, knowing that those are the fuel for all successful results. The future goals get created with commitment to core values. The result is engagement and enthusiasm.

Leader Tip: Business leaders can learn from Joe’s emphasis on the mix of results and focus on culture. Joe uses the lens of core values in all conversations. Talk about the highs and the lows and how you got there with each other as a team.

2. How do you write or talk about your performance perspective for the team?

Lee’s Approach: Ignite Inspiration by Role-Modeling Transparency and Compassion

Lee is a confident and accomplished CEO. She approaches retrospective conversations with a blend of transparency and compassion. She appreciates that her team can see situations and opportunities from a close vantage point. She draws from that and partners with the team for review and vision. In total transparency, she addresses assumptions and accepts all feedback from the team. The team owns their achievements and pinpoints areas for improvement. She also role-models accountability by owning her own challenges and triggers and obstacles. Lee's trust in the team's experience coupled with her own self awareness, sets the stage for a review that sparks motivation and growth.

Leadership Tip: Adopt Lee’s approach to year end conversations by focusing on honesty, compassion, and accountability. Pinpoint the precise needs of the team to foster an environment of continuous growth.

3. How to talk about the year in a team meeting.

Carol’s Strategy: Make it simple, inspiring, and real.

Carol is a business executive who cares for the leadership development of her team. She also is experienced at interpreting the tsunami of year-end information. She looks for themes, key learning opportunities, and repeatable successes. With a volume of information, she makes sure the review is relatable and complete. She focuses on key learnings delivered in a way that the team can understand and apply to the future. Carol transforms end-of-year reviews into catalysts for growth rather than overwhelming challenges.

Leadership Tip: Learn from Carol’s strategy to simplify the big "look-back" conversations. Remove the overwhelm of information. Distill it down to the key pieces that create learning and a roadmap for the coming year.

4. What is the rally cry for the team?

Joe’s Goals and Values: Be a Humanized Leader

Joe’s desire to be a Humanized Leader serves as a compass for review and visioning. To achieve this, Joe prioritizes emotional intelligence, communication, and personal values. Joe believes in the potential of the team and where each will think like an owner, care for each other, and deliver exceptional service with heart. Joe’s personal journey involves conquering self-doubt, healing old wounds, and achieving his full potential as a leader. Joe’s team leadership journey is all about calling his team to a higher level of leadership and execution.

Leadership Tip: Incorporate Joe’s goals and values and inspire the entire company via an all team meeting. Foster a workplace culture centered around emotional intelligence and humanized leadership.

5. How to Reflect, Celebrate, and Recharge with the Team

George’s Desire: Create a Legacy of Growth and Compassion.

George wants his business legacy to be known as an incubator for personal growth. At year-end, he focuses on reflections of the past and optimism for the future. George feels that enthusiastically celebrating achievements balances addressing challenges. George also wants a smooth running machine that produces steady results. George understands that the key to successful reflection lies in highlighting learning, fostering a sense of confidence from both wins and losses, and creating an environment where employees feel valued and supported.

Leadership Tip: Draw inspiration from George's skill at infusing purpose, growth and compassion when reviewing the past and envisioning the future.

In Summary:

Make these transitional conversations have the best alignment of head and heart. With a focus on core values, business goal achievement, AND the personal growth of all, you create impact and inspiration. The wisdom of Joe, Lee, Carol, and George shows us how to motivate team development and effort to improve and deliver results.

All three leaders are Humanized Leaders in all aspects – understanding their own accountability for growth and leadership, celebrating the personal and business wins, and learning from the efforts of the team. What an example they have set for personal and professional growth in the new year!?

* A version of this originally appeared on the Leaders Inspired Blog