Are your team members growth oriented? How do you foster that mindset in your company? Today, Shannon Waller breaks down the January Strategic Coach^® team meeting in which each of the 100+ team members thought through their personal growth and contributions for the upcoming year. How did it work, and how does that investment translate to the success of the business?

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Show Notes:

Motivated For Growth

• The ROI for investing in your team’s personal and professional goals is team members becoming self-managing and growth-oriented.
• For the kick-off meeting of the year, the 100+ team members at Strategic Coach spent three hours thinking about their values, their intentions for the year, and their areas of growth.
• The meeting began with asking everyone to share their intentions for the year based on their values and PRINT^® motivations.

Celebrating The Previous Year’s Achievements And Progress

• Next, the team walked through The Positive Focus® exercise to reflect on achievements and progress from the past year.
• Everyone was asked to write down three business achievements and two personal achievements from the previous year.
• For each achievement, they wrote its significance and why they viewed it as progress.
• Then, they considered what further progress they could make on those achievements and what their first action would be.
• In small breakout groups, they then shared one or two of their achievements, allowing for 20 minutes of celebration and connection.

Connecting Past To Future

• Next, Strategic Coach founder and lead coach Dan Sullivan led the team through the Triple Play^™ exercise, which involves reflecting on and finding connections between three past accomplishments or experiences.
• The insights Shannon gained through this exercise gave great clarity to her 2024 intentions, distilling the lessons of the past year into ideas for a bigger future.

Creating A Bigger Future

• One of Strategic Coach’s favorite mantras is, “Always make your future bigger than your past.”
• Strategic Coach co-founder and CEO, Babs Smith, shared the 10-year vision and three-year vision for the company.
• This set the stage for an exercise called The Bigger Future^™, which helps make ambitious long-term plans more concrete.
• This exercise has people envision their six-year ambitions, then work back to the three-year capabilities they’ll need to develop, and then the one-year challenges that will move them toward those.

Expanding Capabilities Expands Positive Impact

• Expanding individual capabilities expands the positive impact of each team member’s Unique Ability^®, which creates a growth path for a Unique Ability organization.
• Encourage team members to pursue self-directed growth rather than having growth paths dictated to them.
• Give them ownership over their development goals but provide them with the capabilities to achieve them.
• Look for job candidates who are self-motivated learners who bring their own drive and initiative.

Benefits Of Investing In Team Member Growth

• By investing in team members’ personal and professional growth, leaders can gain their gratitude, develop more capable teams, and create loyalty within the organization.
• This can result in lower team member turnover and higher retention of high-performing individuals.
• Even if team members do leave after being supported, they may become raving fans who recommend the company.

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