SWE Local Vegas Talk on Maximizing Potential
I’m giving a talk at SWE Local Vegas on Feb 23 titled, Maximize Potential by Mining for Gold. The takeaways are to focus on your strengths and values, activate your growth mindset, change your questions, and choose levity and optimism.
The session is interactive and includes multiple exercises. Below is what I am preparing for us to do. I will link the exercises to other blog posts in the future.
Intro to Intentional Change Theory
Values and Behaviors: Take 75 seconds to write down 3 to 8 words that describe you.
Celebrate accomplishments: Name as many of your big and small accomplishments from the past year in 90 seconds.
Personal balance sheet: What are your current strengths, potential strengths, and other assets that make you unique? What are your current challenges, long-term challenges, and things you’ve learned or already overcome?
Challenges overcome timeline: Mark on a timeline of your life challenges you’ve faced and when you feel you’ve overcome them.
Imagine waking up in the future in your ideal life. Take 90 seconds to describe your day from when you wake up to when you go to sleep.
Emotional Intelligence Grid: Self-Awareness, Social Awareness, Self-Management, and Relationship Management. Where are your strengths?
Humor makes us appear more confident and competent. What are your favorite jokes?
How can you lead with levity?
Change the questions you ask yourself and others: Train your brain to pause and choose the path of curiosity (who do I want to be) instead of the path of judgment (who can I blame).
Change your explanatory style from the issue is permanent, pervasive, and about me to the issue is temporary, specific, and situational.
Who supports you? Who is on your personal board of directors?
What has made you feel fulfilled in the past year?
Pick one priority you want to work on and list three action steps you plan to take.
You are enough!
Resources
Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth by Richard Boyatzis, Melvin L. Smith, and Ellen Van Oosten (Sep 2019)
The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: And Men: Why Capable People Suffer from Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive In Spite of It by Valerie Young (Oct 2011)
Primal Leadership, With a New Preface by the Authors: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, Richard E. Boyatzis, and Annie McKee (Aug 2013)
Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, 4th Edition: 12 Powerful Tools for Leadership, Coaching, and Results by Marilee Adams Ph.D. (Aug 2022)
Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today by Hal Hershfield (June 2023)
Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About by Jennifer Breheny Wallace (Aug 2023)
The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work by Simone Stolzoff (May 2023)
The Levity Effect: Why it Pays to Lighten Up by Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher (Apr 2008)
Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how anyone can harness it. Even you.) by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas (Feb 2021)
Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You're Put on the Spot by Matt Abrahams (Sep 2023)
Rituals for Work: 50 Ways to Create Engagement, Shared Purpose, and a Culture that Can Adapt to Change by Kursat Ozenc and Margaret Hagan (Mar 2019)
How to be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings: Non-threatening Leadership Strategies for Women by Sarah Cooper (Oct 2018)
100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings: How to Get by Without Even Trying by Sarah Cooper (Oct 2016)
