Your Story, My Story, Our Story

As 2016 ends and the page of the calendar turns, we are once again, offered a fresh opportunity to begin again.
But let’s not turn the page too quickly without looking back and pondering for just a minute or two on all that has been.

This year, as I intentionally pause, the tug on my heart nudges me to not think so much of what I have accomplished or the work Fortis Group has completed, but rather my thoughts are turned to each of you, and to us, doing life together.

For whatever the reason, or the project, you invited us, to do life with you.

As I ponder accepting your invitation, I realize that your story became a part of my story. Your story became our story.

Our shared experience may have been through a coaching engagement; participation in the Emerging and Evolving Leaders program; strategizing on transforming your workplace culture; developing a high-performing team, or tackling an HR project such as new compensation program, etc.

However important and meaningful these projects are, they are the vehicles that carried us to intersecting with one another on our life’s journey.

As you and I were running life’s race marked out for each of us, we connected and our stories merged. Your chapter and my chapter, during this snapshot in time, were written and melded with the great purpose of one thing…Transformation.

trans·for·ma·tion: 
1. the act or process of transforming.
2. the state of being transformed.
3. change in form, appearance, nature, or character.
4. an equivalent change in an expression or equation resulting from the substitution of one set of variables by another (Mathematics).

For those of you that know me well, I tend to gravitate toward definitions 1-3. Number 4 scares me. Anything to do with numbers and equations has been a life-long growing edge that has yet to be, well…transformed!

If the authors of the dictionary asked me what I think (and of course they did not) I believe that there is a 5th definition that reflects what I have seen in you.

trans·for·ma·tion: 
5. the intentional process of letting go to make room for

For example, I saw you…

• Let go of discouragement and make room for new inspiration and energy to restart that high-risk project that others thought failed, and you knew it was well worth staying at the table for.
• Let go of being emotionally and relationally expensive and make room for a new, healthy and generous way of thinking about the value that “sandpaper” personality brings to you, the team, and the organization.
• Let go of, or exchange your gift-of-gab to make room for the gift of listening generously to someone who needed you to be present.
• Let go of old, worn-out stories of wondering why someone hurt you to make room for a fresh, new perspective of asking, what can I learn from this?
• Let go of carrying the burden of needing to make the tough, unpopular decision to make room for the freedom of clarity in carrying out your convictions.
• Let go of assumptions about another person, or team, to make room for understanding that they too, have a story that matters.
• Let go of an old, toxic narrative about your workplace culture to make room for understanding that you are the culture, one conversation at a time, one action at a time.