Liberating Your Potential to Optimize Individual and Organizational Success
Posted on September 28, 2017 by Kitty Fallon, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
This article explores a 6-step process to unleash individual and organizational potential.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us…Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine…And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. ~Marianne Williamson
Your organization’s potential, indeed each employee’s individual potential, may be hidden in plain sight; and both are interdependent. Liberate one, and likely you release the other. The process for achieving this will involve commitment at each step: deep and open listening, honest assessment and feedback, change, continuous critical self and systemic reflection, course correction, and a willingness to embrace and liberate your potential. Most assuredly, the way is neither linear nor easy, but the outcome will ignite an immeasurable degree of fulfillment, purpose, passion, and meaning.
To what are you committing? Make an informed decision. Be prepared for multiple moments of yes or no, go or no go, move or maintain the status quo. Each choice point has consequences. Each decision is made individually and collectively – from the leaders to the line staff. You are committing to look within yourself for the habits, thoughts, beliefs, choices, and yes – feelings that both serve you and keep you small and apparently secure. You are committing to examine honestly what parts you play in your organization’s status quo. You are committing to stretch to see the potential within yourself that may lay dormant and from which you may feel disconnected and fearful. You are committing to shine. You are committing to contribute your ideas, concerns, honest feedback, creativity, gumption, and skills in service of your organization’s potential and mission. You are committing to recognize whether or not your fit within this organization serves you and the collective and to do something about that.
The collective is comprised of people making both individual and system-wide commitments. Together you commit to reflect honestly and understanding complexly your status quo. What’s going on at the surface, and what do surface signs tell you about underlying patterns, relationship dynamics, limitations, and reactions? You commit to consider how aligned you are with your organization’s core values and mission. You commit to examine your organization’s health and feasibility for ongoing success. You commit to explore creatively the depth and breadth of your potential to contribute meaningfully to our world’s emerging opportunities and challenges. You commit to stretch beyond what is and creating what could be. You commit to embrace the abundance awaiting you when you choose to create from individual and collective potential.
Committing to move launches a process stretching you and your team. Deep and open listening requires the very qualities that currently may be most raw: courage, presence, risk, honesty, hope, curiosity, acceptance, compassion, and forgiveness. Listening to as many voices as possible from diverse angles may stretch your current assumptions. Individually, you may believe your voice does not matter and nothing will change. Collectively you may assume this process is a waste of time and if we just try harder, we will succeed. When you listen and step outside old beliefs, you can adopt an assumption that everything you hear and see makes sense. Your curiosity inspires you to understand complexly the sense the status quo is making and what and how things could be different.
Having supported deep listening, with gleaned insight you can assess and welcome feedback on what is and what could be. Again, extend wide invitations for participation – including all levels of organization staff, customers, and stakeholders. Honor the value and creative potential within each voice. Recognize within yourself – whether leader or newest employee – you may contribute just the idea needed to open a once blocked organizational dynamic. Risk; be large; and shine. As you move through deep listening, assessment, and feedback, a new choice point faces you – to change or not.
Changes may be restorative as well as launch you towards emerging possibilities. Trust, consistency, respect, and openness may need healing. Decisions you made in fear and insecurity may shift towards decisions made with more input, clearer boundaries, renewed ethical integrity, and deeper understanding of client benefit. You may revise policies and procedures and organizational structures to better align with your purpose and newly discovered staff capacities. This process will be messy and with continuous self and systemic reflection, you will course correct as often as needed to find a direction that serves you today and tomorrow.
As you – both individually and collectively – lift your eyes from what kept you small, you catch a glimpse of your horizon and begin reaching towards that which you might have thought impossible or out of reach. You may recognize a new service, need, direction, or emerging market. You may discover a talent once hidden that you want to cultivate. Can you feel the energy shift – higher, lighter, more creative, feeling more hopeful and curious, even feeling more love for your organization and peers? That energy will inspire you to create an abundant future.
You are powerful beyond measure. Your collective contributions within your organization can help our world create a vibrant tomorrow. I am here to serve you and your organization moving through this process of liberating your potential!
