What Could You Accomplish if You Had Clarity and Certainty?

Today’s environment is characterized by economic challenges, political divisions, and geopolitical tensions. These factors, amongst others, create an uncertain environment for businesses and professionals.

In business, growth projections are down, regulatory and policy changes worldwide may impact your business, and labor market challenges will present issues for employers for the foreseeable future.

So what are you to do?

Not to worry! I’ll help you take steps to find clarity and certainty.

How do you do that? What does that mean?

In your work and your professional development, there are steps you can take to harness leadership and resiliency tools and gain the clarity and certainty needed for your success, and your organization’s success.

Clarity and certainty will become your competitive advantage!

Identify Your Fundamental Values and Strengths

I worked through a coaching engagement with a senior government manager who felt very dissatisfied with their work. Pat was an accomplished professional, spending many years with their department. Pat put their heart and soul into their meaningful government work dealing with public policy issues involving disadvantaged segments of Americans.

Recently Pat’s work began to feel empty. Pat knew something was off, but initially chalked it up to short-term frustration with upper management decisions.

As I coached Pat, it was evident to me that through our sessions Pat’s values were no longer in alignment with their organization’s values. Work became more focused on policy instead of directly assisting those in need.

Pat worked with me to identify their strengths and values. Pat set values-based goals after doing the hard values work with me. Through our coaching sessions Pat came to understand values-based goals allow you to make progress towards living your best life.

And most important, Pat gained clarity and certainty. Invaluable.

So where do you start?

1.Identify 5-7 values

Now that you have five - seven values narrow it down to the top three you can’t live without—I know, it's hard! Once you do that, put your values list aside for later reference.

Values represent the most authentic version of ourselves—so embrace them!

2. Now, Think About The Best Of Times…

Think back to a rewarding moment or when you were in a state of flow, whether at work or in your personal life. What do you remember? What were you doing? What values were being honored during this time, during your flow?

When you think about these values that stood out in this example, how does it make you feel?

Pay attention to this. These are your values in action! Don’t be surprised if these values are different from the ones you listed earlier. These values in action could be the values that are missing from your professional and personal life.

3. Bring Your Strengths

You have identified your values, now understand how your strengths amplify your values. Identifying values and strengths will build meaning and help you identify new ways to use your strengths. Like most people, you probably have taken your strengths for granted. You might not even be conscious of your strengths!

There are several strengths survey tools online, many of which are free, that will help you identify your specific strengths.

Another approach that I highly recommend, and should be easy for you, is to ask friends, family, and/or work colleagues to identify your strengths. They sometimes know our strengths better than we do! I used this approach several years ago when I was at a career crossroads. These discussions led to me becoming a certified coach!

Know Values-Know Strengths-Know Success

You can now identify your core values and key strengths. Now what?

With this information, you can set values-based goals that will be the reflection of your best self. It might not make it easier to achieve these goals (or it might), but you will ensure you are pursuing your goals, that are in alignment with your values. When you pursue values-based goals you will also develop resilience that will carry you through the challenges of pursuing a difficult but rewarding path. This resiliency occurs when you pursue goals that are in alignment with your values and provide a sense of purpose.

With this sense of purpose, you are unstoppable! 

You will have clarity AND certainty!

This is why values work is so important!!

Ready and Resilient

Values alignment forms the foundation for your personal resiliency.

Now, that you have done the values work, you are ready to sharpen your resiliency. 

Gratitude Practice

Implement regular gratitude reflection to maintain perspective throughout the life's ups and downs. This practice builds emotional resilience and helps you stay centered during high-pressure periods.

What are you grateful for today? 

Gratitude leads to positivity and confident decision making. Just another way these tools help you find clarity and certainty.

Re-Framing

Transform setbacks into growth opportunities by analyzing past situations and developing strategic responses. Like adjusting strategy based on data, reframing allows you to optimize your leadership approach through experience.

Do not worry about what is out of control.

You can control how you react to events and your environment.

In today’s rapidly changing world the power of self-awareness and resilience cannot be overstated. By identifying our core values and strengths, we lay a solid foundation for personal and professional growth through understanding who we are and what we can be.

Resilience equips us to navigate uncertainty with confidence. 

I hope you continue to move forward knowing you have practical tools at your disposal to find clarity and certainty in an uncertain world.