Where are you now, and where are you going?

Happy, happy new year, and welcome back to The Leader's Playground!

In the last issue of 2022, I shared this practice of writing a “Letter to Ourselves,” reflecting on the year we’ve had at my company, PotentialSquared. Only… I wrote that letter at the end of 2021—as if I was looking back on 2022. 

And the guesses I made at what would transpire over the year, how we’d evolve as an organization, and what our new hopes would become, was freakishly spot-on. 

More than anything, it was a lovely exercise in dreaming, focusing, and setting intention. It’s also about that “pre-mortem” where you predict what will go wrong or what our biggest challenges will be. 

I believe it served me as a leader, and it served our organization. So I did it again, and I want to share some of it. 

What will 2023 hold? 

Lessons in Leadership

The Christmas and New Year season is my favorite time of year. Not because of the weather (have you been to The UK?), but because it’s a time to connect with family and loved ones, to reflect on the past year, and to rest and reset for what’s to come.

It’s not dissimilar to the “evaluation” stage of an experiment: We did many things throughout the year, some of which went well and some of which failed miserably. At the year’s end, we get to reflect on them all, learn from what happened, and set new intentions for the year to come. 

As someone who can never get enough learning and improvement, I relish this opportunity to implement new wisdom, habits, and ideas for the future.  

A big part of that is the “Letter to Ourselves” that I write. Manifestation for the modern-day leader, it offers me the opportunity to dream about what I hope happens in the year to come, and to write about it as if it has happened already. I don’t know about you, but there’s something powerful about writing down where we are headed and what we are going to accomplish. 

And this year, I’m aiming for our biggest—and most meaningful—goal yet. To rebuild our entire identity around what we learned through trial and error in 2022, our true core purpose: 

To create connection and disrupt leadership to build a better world for all. 

What does that look like? For me, and for P2, it means using our platform to serve our purpose—this newsletter, our work with clients around the globe, the podcast—it only matters if it’s elevating others and bringing us together for the betterment of all. 

This is what I wrote in this year’s Letter:  

“We make heroes of our clients. We tell their stories. We have broken free of our own echo chamber and are reaching out to different voices to help enhance and shape our teachable points of view.”

Being part of an organization that changes the world, in whatever form, isn’t about talking the loudest, making the most sales, or being better than your competitors. It’s about knowing, deep in your heart, that you are pursuing a purpose so true to you that you can’t help but chase it—and knowing that that purpose serves others. 

Is your leadership serving others in 2023?

What to Read This Week

My company, PotentialSquared, just released an article forecasting leadership trends to look out for in 2023.

Among the trends my amazing team have been tracking in forecasts are: values-driven leadership, leading in a hybrid world, prioritizing employee mental health and wellness, and investing in leadership development.

They kindly allowed me to offer some perspective as a lover of Connection. Perhaps it's helpful to you:

"In the hybrid world, leaders struggle to do a few things. The first is to find the rhythm of connection with team members who choose different days and patterns of office vs. remote work. Finding those common times to be in the same place is crucial. The second element that is essential once that rhythm has been set is to find the right connection, habits and practices in the face-to-face connections.” 

Leading teams through the pandemic was HARD. Leading teams in this strange post-pandemic era is HARD in a new way. Not only did the pandemic strip us of the connection we were accustomed to; it changed what we value about our work—perhaps most meaningfully, the depth of connection, purpose, and humanity we demand. 

Read the full article for more on the leadership trends we'll see in 2023, as well as how we've worked as a company to put connection first... And the incredible outcomes that happen. 

The Leadership Tales Podcast

If we’re connected on LinkedIn, then you probably saw that we released a very special episode of The Leadership Tales Podcast this week: We hand-selected and compiled the “Best of Seasons 1 & 2” just for you!  

We did the same with Season 3, and that “Best of” episode will be available on Tuesday, January 17. 

Season 4 (with a brand new logo to boot!) will kick off on Tuesday, January 24th with a fabulous episode with none other than Michael Bungay Stanier—I couldn’t be more excited. MBS is a best-selling author (with over 1 million books sold, and thousands of 5-star reviews) and coach, and he wrote the script for disrupting “traditional” leadership hierarchies. 

Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts—and if you can, please leave a review. Each review helps put our show in front of more listeners, which means more opportunities for those who need them. 

And if you know of someone you think would be a great guest on the show, reply and let me know about them. I want to share stories from leaders making a positive difference in the world—and the more tales we tell, the better.

Until next time...

Thank you for joining me in 2023. I hope this year brings us both new experiments, failures, learnings, and celebrations. 

And if you have questions or thoughts to share, please don’t hesitate to respond to this email. I’d love to chat with you. And if you like what I’m doing and have someone who might enjoy it too, please forward them this email or invite them to subscribe below. 

See you in two weeks!

Cheers,Colin

To learn more about my book, Be More Wrong: How Failure Makes You an Outstanding Leader, click here.