Impact

As my birthday approaches [tomorrow], I am reflecting on time and where I've been over the course of my life. I realize that I've been at my job for almost 11 years. I've never 'been' anywhere except my childhood this long. I don't think when I accepted my first position at Impact I thought I'd be here 10 (almost 11) years later, yet here I am and it's largely in part to 'who we are'. We have 12 Guiding Principles, and "Fun and Storytelling" is one that makes it easy to stay.    "We love spending time together. We seek opportunities to create memorable moments and share stories to emotionally connect, to laugh and cry, to honour each other and live out our culture."   Having FUN together is so easy because everyone brings a little spice with them and knows how to smile, laugh and celebrate. I've had so many memorable moments it's hard to choose, but I've made the hard choice and will share a story about leading my first Team offsite in 2023.   I had been in my new role just under two years, and had hired almost an entirely new team. We'd been a team for a year and had never been together in person. I was pretty nervous as the one responsible for running the offsite. We got an airbnb, agreed to do two days of team work and one day of fun together. The first day of work together was such a great day, I was feeling super inspired and energized. We addressed some core skills that aligned to our Leadership point of view and had a chance to do some activities we'd not seen on programs. Everyone showed up - it could have been my gift of gel pens… but I think it was them. 😉 Day two was our break and day of fun. We decided to go to The Walt Disney Company's Epcot Center and have a worldly adventure. I discovered that everyone was super FUN, funny, and real joys to be around. My favorite memory was of our random poses with the Flower and Garden show Topiaries in the shapes of Disney characters. Captain Hook, Encanto, Pluto, Groot, you name it, we recreated it, faces and all. Our final day was another work day and we pulled it all together. Answering the question of "What do we each bring to the role and how does it connect to the wider business?" We leaned on our in house sketch artist to draw the Bifröst connecting us to Impact, and challenged each other to brainstorm what we brought to the team. The end result was a shared mural to represent all of us individually and collectively. We had a lot of fun, a lot of valuable learning with and from each other and no one was injured; [except for one bottle of wine that met a tile floor abruptly.] Now that's what I call success.

Asking bold questions.   It's been 2 1/2 years since I've been with Impact and I've learned more about myself than I could've imagined. A little over 2 years ago today, the US Impact team traveled to Napa, CA for our annual team offsite. We got to spend quality time together while also participating in some projects that we incorporate into client programs. For me, the most impactful moment was when we took the CliftonStrengths assessment and debriefed in our functional teams on how we could use the results to better our ways of working. I wouldn't say my results were shocking, but they definitely showed me that some of my qualities were actually strengths that could be leveraged.    The strength that resonated with me the most from my Top 5, was Analytical. As defined by Gallup, "People exceptionally talented in the Analytical theme search for reasons and causes. They have the ability to think about all of the factors that might affect a situation." I have always been one to ask questions or look for more data before feeling comfortable enough to make an informed decision. However, when I was asking questions, I could feel like I was being a nuisance and ruining the flow of the discussions I was participating in. It was eye-opening to realize that this quality of mine was not a flaw and my urge to consistently crave more data could be used to everyone's benefit. With this knowledge, over the past two years I have been bolder and more eager to ask questions on my teams to prompt deeper discussions.   This brings me back to my first statement: Asking bold questions. When I think about which of Impact's twelve guiding principles I connect to the most, I would be remiss to not highlight the principle that I am actively living. I no longer hold back asking bold questions to my team members or to our clients. I've found that questioning the status-quo is not a common occurrence and yet a place that I naturally excel at.    I probably would have never made the progress I have today without my CliftonStrengths debrief (thank you to our magnificent CliftonStrengths expert Trevor Johnson, PHR), my manager Carrie Fritz who embraced my analytical side, and of course, Impact's human-centered initiative. Picture from our Offsite in 2022 😊