The Power of Intention & Human Connection

Yesterday I intentionally explored the Power of Human Connection with peers and colleagues from different walks of my life. The result was energizing, clarifying, and meaningful so I want to share more about the experience in case you find it useful. As I write this, I realize that being intentional may seem simple, but in reality, it requires the orchestration of mindfulness, reflection, purpose, energy, and interpersonal communication.

The origin story of remembering what it means to be intentional

The last few years of my career have been full. With this busyness, I have both excelled in my career, while simultaneously stepping onto a treadmill of reactivity. My day was filled with reacting to fires, and, I was competent in understanding and resolving the root causes of many of these fires, so it felt productive. Feeling productive when in a reactive mindset is dangerous because it erodes intentionality. At some point, driving something forward because you truly mean to becomes a memory of a distant past. Instead when looking back over the day, it reads like a decoupage of mixed media remnants that lacked purpose or the potential for long term, meaningful impact. In reality, some of these 'urgent' problems were not mine to solve and in parallel, solving them took me away from what's truly important for me to focus on. This is the moment when I paused, looked inward, and remembered the importance of setting clear intentions to achieve meaningful outcomes that ultimately align with my purpose.

An excerpt in 4 parts - Living Intentionally

Over the last few months, I made a commitment to move from reactivity to intentionality and established a daily practice of mindfulness to achieve this personal goal. Yesterday, I experienced the fruits of this labor and I am moved to share it with you. Below is a breakdown of the flow.

Part 1: Feeling inspired

I received an invitation to attend an in person networking Chief event tailored to women leaders who work in biotech, pharma and health and I was excited by the idea. Inspiration is a visceral sensation for me, it surges like a charge? throughout my body, and it happens multiple times throughout the day. The trouble with inspiration is that it isn't lasting, nor does it always align with our current needs, goals, or purpose. In my last role, inspiration was conflated with fixing problems: Ah, I know the root cause,.... and away I went.

Part 2: Pausing to Reflect

The key here is to pause and sit with the inspiration, to reflect on it instead of reacting to it. Thanks to Healthy Minds Innovation for providing me with this profound awareness technique: I imagine my mind is like the sky (a neutral space) and I observe the clouds and light of inspiration pass through my minds eye. This mindfulness serves as a tool to understand, filter, clarify, and prioritize one motivation over another. As I reflected on multiple points of inspiration, the Chief event persisted and rose to the top.

Part 3: Align with Purpose

By reflecting and pausing, I could now connect and strategize with a deeper sense of purpose. If I were going to attend this event in Cambridge, I wanted to take advantage of being in Boston to connect with some of the intelligent people who live there so that I can make progress on broader goals I have. For example, right now:

1. I'm deeply curious to learn from first-hand accounts how startup companies successfully grow, scale, get investments, and go through mergers. For this, I thought, who better to talk with then some of the leadership team from a startup company that went through a 2022 acquisition and 2023 merger.
2. I'm compelled to explore and effectively communicate how I connect my personal purpose or raison d'etre with my professional career achievements.

Part 4: Set an Intention, Focus my Energy, & Communicate

With this awareness in hand, I had what I needed to coordinate the people and places.

1. I reached out to a few peers from the C-suite and senior leadership team of a recently acquired startup and coordinated a lunch to go deeper on the topic of startup success & failure stories. It was a comfortable setting to consider one another's perspective and to thread a more comprehensive tapestry of the topic. I chose lunch, because I wanted to celebrate the accomplishment of one of my peers who recently became Head of Platform enterprise software in a well-regarded multi-billion dollar software company.
2. I rented a co-working space and asked a purpose-driven colleague (Information Architect and former Design Executive in a Fortune 4 company) if he wanted to get together for an impromptu brainstorming event to delve into the intersection of purpose with profession. Of course he did! Not only did he show up with big pads and markers, we actually had fun.
3. Finally, I attended the Chief networking event and had the extreme pleasure of meeting and getting to know many of the women I have admired in online sessions. Taking it offline and adding the in person dynamic gave us the opportunity to open up, slow down, and discuss the ways in which we are thriving and surviving. We had the space to connect the dots and share our learnings to lift one another up. To that end, I was serendipitously paired with a senior leader who has two job offers and wanted advice on how to decide which one she should accept - both were with startups with a three year runway. How apropo! And, we laughed, genuinely. Yes, we are nerds... said the executive who shadows at night as a Dungeons and Dragon female Ogre and the executive who is an active member in her Book Club social hour.

As I reflect on yesterday, I am filled with gratitude and appreciation. I set an intention to get out there, to crystalize my purpose by deepening my professional and personal connection with peers and colleagues from different points in my life - past and future.

I'd love to hear how you've made progress towards or struggled with being intentional in your professional life, please do share here or in a direct message.