Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who will be celebrating Thanksgiving this week. This is a holiday I truly love. What is better than taking time to focus on everything we have to be thankful for, spending time with family, and of course eating too much good food.
Thanksgiving is also my signal that the year will soon be over. This makes me quickly start thinking and questioning if I got everything done during year that I intended. What do you have left to accomplish in 2017?
One big item I need to finish for work at the end of every year is submitting a summary of my annual accomplishments along with comments of what has gone well and what could be improved. The exact due date and format has changed over the years, however completing this is almost a rite of passage to being able to say the year is complete.
Do you have to do something similar? As you look back on the year how do you feel about what you have accomplished? Does it make you smile and feel proud of your growth in 2017? Are you glad there is still one more month so you can cram in getting another goal or two accomplished? Or maybe you feel like are you done with 2017, lets chalk it up to experience, and try again in 2018?
No matter how 2017 went it is always interesting how this exercise makes people feel. I have found on my team, how people feel about communicating their accomplishments is not directly correlated with how the year actually went. Is communicating your accomplishments something you are comfortable with and does it make you honored to document them? Or do you shy away and hesitate feeling you don’t want others to think you are bragging? Me, I am a little of both. I feel comfortable formally documenting everything at the end of the year. However, during the year I find I don’t take the time or effort to communicate my accomplishments.
What if we changed our mindset and believed it is ok to brag? Now I am not suggesting exaggerating what you accomplish, however if you did complete something there is no reason you should not be able to tell people about it. Maybe we could help each other out and support each other with sharing our accomplishments.
My challenge in the last month of the year is to identify people that accomplished something they should brag about and tell them what an excellent job they did. Also, if I hear someone communicating about something they accomplished I want to give them some support to show them it is ok to share. Will you join me in this challenge?
