Relay Hand-off Time
Last weekend, one of my Facebook memories included photos of the Pennsylvania Ragnar Road Relay I did with a team of 12 women in 2 vans last year, each running 3 legs over about a 36-hour time window. As you would expect from a relay, part of the experience is handing the baton (or something to represent it) off to the next runner. Each time you handed off, there was a sigh of relief for successfully doing your part but also the anticipation of being ready to run the next leg several hours later. It was a great event overall offset with some rainy weather and some tough race legs but something I’d do again with the right people.
As I reflected on this relay, I saw a correlation to life events going on now for me. This year, we sold our first home that’s been a rental for 20+ years, signed a contract to build a house in Lewes in a newer neighborhood, put our first Delaware home on the market and sold that this summer, and moved into our Lewes condo in August in anticipation of our new house being ready in October/November. The exciting news is that we’ll close on the new house next week.
We’re ready to pass the housing baton again and with that comes excitement but also anticipation, planning and decision-making about how we want the house to look and feel aesthetically as we move in.
Just like I do with my clients, we can use the I-CAN strategy to create the experience we want.
Intentions - How do we want to use each of the spaces? How do we want to feel when we’re in the house or the specific rooms?
Create the Plan - Map out the rooms we want to have with color vs. the neutral that’s there now, find a paint color and a painter.
Prioritize the purchases and projects.
Order the window treatments and the rugs.
And the list goes on.
Act on the Plan - starting Tuesday, the fun starts. We get to start moving things in and figuring out where we want things to go, what we kept that we don’t need and what’s missing. We get to start experiencing the living.
Navigate - all the things we thought we knew we wanted may turn to be out different once we start living in the house. We’ll need to stay flexible with our plan but true to our intentions of what we want from the home experience. As anyone who has moved houses or done renovations, this will be the most challenging phase because there will be things we didn’t expect.
Going back to the relay: My first leg of the Ragnar didn’t look intimidating on paper, but what I found as I got out there was several of the roads didn’t have shoulders, there were more cars out in the early morning than I expected, and the leg was much more hilly than I assumed. I needed to manage my mindset and my race plan to successfully finish my leg.
Just like with this relay example, as leaders, we need to be prepared to deal with the unexpected as we navigate our personal and organizational leadership journeys.
Wish us luck on our moving days next week!
Have a great weekend!
Making sure you have a strategy in place for how you want to lead yourself, your team, and your organization is key. Let's get you back on track together. Schedule a 90-minute strategy session with me.