They say hindsight is 2020 and never has that expression mattered more than it does now.  I’ve been reflecting on what 2020 has taught me.  Here are my biggest takeaways from a year that I won’t miss.  

Set intentions not goals.

I coached leaders in enough businesses in 2020 to watch them pivot, iterate, set new goals and scrap OKRs altogether.  There was too much uncertainty, unpredictability, and ever shifting sand to find firm footing.  The companies that I watched succeed, however, stayed true to their intentions.  They didn’t let goal setting anxieties or missing targets hold them back.  I’m following the same advice for myself.

I’ve never been much of a goal setter and, in fact, psychometric instruments (also known as personality tests) back me up on that.  Reflect on that for a moment.  I have three advanced degrees and bucket loads of “achievements” — jobs at the best law firms in the world, an Oxford degree and associate fellowship there, been featured on top radio shows and in prime media publications, and now I’m launching my own business.  And I am not a goal setter.

When I set goals, anxiety sets in.  I can’t sleep and I spend my life measuring things.  When we first launched our online coaching program, I thought I should set goals.  How many instagram followers, email subscribers, and facebook friends do we have?  Suddenly, I couldn’t sleep without checking in on how I was doing against my goals.  When I realized that was happening, I stopped.  

I went back to my intention — to help get as many women into leadership positions as possible.  Suddenly everything shifted.  I stopped counting followers and subscribers.  I refocused all of my attention on what the women I’m coaching need.  What can I do today to support, challenge and promote the women I reach through my work.  That is the only measure of success.  

Goal setting produces anxiety and wastes time.  Intention setting means I am living my core values every day.  And it doesn’t get in the way of achievement. 

Safety is an inside job.

Holy sh*t — did the world feel unsafe this year or what? Once the stay-at-home orders hit California, the panic set it.  I had just finished a meeting in LA and stopped at Whole Foods on the way home.  I had no idea what was happening.  I met a distraught young woman sitting on the floor in the middle of a nearly empty aisle looking for a can of anything.  I sat down next to her.  This was before we knew about masks and social distancing.

“Are you okay?”

She said, “Everyone seems to be panicking so it makes me feel like I should be panicking too.”  

“No,” I said.  “You shouldn’t be.”

That was a profound moment for me.   We talked for awhile about how having an abundance of dried rice and beans and toilet paper wasn’t going to make either of us feel any safer.  I bought beer and left. 

What 2020 made clear was that, yes, we need to pay attention, care for and believe in ourselves and each other, practice safe social distancing and have compassion.  But safety is an inside job. There was nothing we could be certain of in 2020 and that is not going to change in 2021.  I returned to more contemplative practices in 2020.  Meditation to stay present, the poetry of Mary Oliver and the warm fur of my soft animals to keep me warm.

Feeling safe to me means being present and awake in my body.  I feel safe because I am living a life with purpose and intention and believing in myself because I’m living consistently with my values. I recognize that I am privileged to not live with food scarcity and to have a warm place to sleep every night. That is abundance.

Fix your own oxygen mask first.

We can be of no service to others when we are not okay ourselves.  This was the year that I took self care to new levels and never once considered self care to be a selfish act.  I tried out every tool in the resilience tool chest.  

I sent thank you notes to people who helped me along the way which made me feel better for a while. 

I kept a silver linings notebook.  

I meditated for 5 minutes a day, then 10, then twice a day for 20.  I practiced several different kinds of meditation over the last year.

I did yoga, then I hired a trainer, then I tried fast walking, then I did a few deadlifts with my corgi.

I binge watched Netflix, took a break from TV altogether, listened to audiobooks and podcasts, returned to hardcover and took entire media breaks.

I took hot baths and cold showers.

When asked by my coaching clients what to do to feel better, I said “whatever works.”  

The most important lesson I learned was that when we are stuck in our homes for nearly a year, we may have to try different things at different times and we have to take care of ourselves first.  My entire job is to support others and if I’m in bad shape, I’m in no shape to help anyone.  

Never lose your sense of humor.

This familiar adage is one my father used to preach but I don’t think I really appreciated how important it was until this year.  He died a few years ago and mostly I remember him telling me this as a teenager.  Through tears I implored him to understand that there was nothing funny about what I was going through.

Boy was he wise.  Humor is the antidote.  In 2020, so many horrible things were made so clear that we could not look away.  Injustices, murders, inequality, brutality, hate, fear and so much death.  My pod has been very small in 2020.  Limited only to my brother and my daughter.  Thankfully, they are both pretty funny.  

Humor makes us resilient.  Humor weakens negative emotions.  Humor strengthens our immune systems.  Humor makes us feel like we belong.  Humor gives us energy.  Humor revitalizes us.  Humor makes the unbearable bearable. 

In the words of Viktor Frankl, the Austrian Holocaust survivor who wrote about what Auschwitz taught him in Man’s Search for Meaning, “I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable.”

It is time for organizations to double down on creating workplaces of belonging and inclusion, or risk losing their women.

According to the McKinsey and LeanIn.org 2020 Women in the Workplace study, two million women are estimated to consider taking a leave of absence or leaving the workplace altogether due to Covid-19.  Close to one million women have already left the workplace.  This is the first time in six-years that women have left work at a pace far greater than men and this unprecedented departure threatens to undo years of hard work in the direction of achieving gender balance in the workplace, leaving aside for the moment the strides we must be taking towards achieving gender balance in leadership. 

It will take organizations a lot to keep their women.  So organizations must  first understand why diversity really matters and commit to getting serious about keeping their women.  

Diversity improves the quality of a team’s work.

Diversity leads to higher-quality work, better decision-making, and greater team satisfaction.  When done well, it impacts not only the company’s bottom line but the lives of its employees and everyone in the organization’s ecosystem, including clients, customers, vendors and suppliers.  Organizations with whom I consult want higher quality products and happier, more productive teams; yet when it comes to doing the  hard work, there is still resistance.  Homogeneity is easier. If we are serious about changing things, we must actually believe that change will result in better.                

Women leaders create the conditions for success

I coach women in leadership because women leaders create the conditions for themselves and others to thrive.  Research in a 2019 Harvard Business Review Article shows that women are thought to be more effective than men in 84% of the competencies that are frequently developed in leadership including, among other things, taking initiative, resilience, self-development, driving for results, displaying honesty and integrity, developing, inspiring and motivating others. 

Strong listening skills and empathetic leadership leads to outstanding results.  For example, in showcasing Jacinda Arden’s leadership in New Zealand, the Atlantic wrote that New Zealand’s Prime Minister “may be the most effective leader on the planet.” Describing her style as one, “focused on empathy,” that “isn’t just resonating with her people; it’s putting the country on track for success against the coronavirus.”  Leading with empathy is one of the most important things people in organizations can do to build more diversity and inclusion.

Diversity means getting comfortable with difficult conversations

Organizations must double down on building psychological safety at work.  Thanks to Amy Edmonson’s work at Harvard and Google’s Project Aristotle, many are familiar with the term psychological safety and know that it leads to more effective teams.  But in practice, and as it relates to diversity, creating psychological safety means fostering an environment where we can talk honestly about the vulnerabilities we feel around privilege and discrimination, inclusion and exclusion, without fear of punishment or retribution.  

We must learn to share what we don’t know, what makes us uncomfortable, what feels unfair and how we can work collectively to tackle systemic barriers to inclusion and promotion.  Using tried and tested methods of communication like Marshall Rosenberg’s nonviolent communication model, Nancy Kline’s thinking rounds or the Young Presidents Organization’s model for forums which includes listening, accepting and sharing are all good places to start.  And leaders of organizations must be doing this work themselves.  Without them engaging, role modeling, practicing and leading from the front, change will not happen.

A culture of inclusion is required to get to balance

Belonging and inclusion mean diverse ideas, perspectives and people are considered when decisions are made.  Organizations must be rigorously thoughtful about who gets access to information, how people communicate and what gets considered when it’s time to decide.  There must be regular acts of courageous leadership, speaking truth to power and insisting on diversity in leadership, in talent pipelines and on boards.  

Embracing equality requires challenging what we think works

In embracing the collective awakening to barriers to promotion and, at times like these, even to staying at work, we need to explore deeply the extent to which stereotypes or assumptions are at play in the organization.  Who is included and who is not?  What voices get heard?  Who has real power and how did they get that power?  Even NASDAQ is embracing equality with their proposed new listing rules that will require all of the companies listed on the US exchange to require at least two diverse directors on boards, one of which must be a woman. 

“We are human beings, not human doings.”

– Dalia Lama

Finally, we all need to have real conversations about the way we work.  As the Dalai Lama said, we are human beings, not human doings.  We need to take a hard look at what we are demanding and what we get in return.  In what is currently a remote only environment for many of us, can we be flexible about how and when we respond to work related inquiries?  In making work sustainable, we must ask what are our goals, the scope of our projects and how we agree to certain timelines? This requires clarity  about expectations and why they matter, and consideration of the whole person working, particularly working mothers, working single mothers, working women caring for others and women working to care for themselves.