(March 10, 2025 Newsletter)
“Awareness creates choices. Practice builds capacity.”
I learned this phrase in a course I took last year and since then I’ve found myself repeating it to myself and clients regularly.
It’s not enough to be aware of best practices.
Taking breaks between meetings will keep me more focused and emotionally balanced as the day progresses.
I will sleep better at night if I don’t look at my phone for an hour before bedtime.
We should, we shouldn’t, we should, we shouldn’t. And then nothing changes.
What does it mean to practice? What does it mean to build capacity?
Why it matters
As a leader, you can’t expect those in your care to evolve to do their best work if they don’t see you modeling growth and personal capacity building.
Sometimes you’re doing it for yourself and sometimes with others. Just last week a client said to me “We should have open lines of communication” when referring to a team member. She said it with the smile of “I know I’m saying something obvious,” since many people say it, but not many people do it.
I told her that I agreed. We talked through why that’s important (specifically, not just holistically), and brainstormed some ways that they can begin practicing that together.
In short, turning your insights into new action is the only way to lift your team or company to new heights.
What it means to build capacity
What is the choice you’re making? This newsletter is focusing on the capacity piece, but we can’t skip past the awareness piece entirely. What is the new choice you want to make, and why? What possibilities arise once you’ve made the choice?
Start small and be specific. Just like with our outside-of-work lives, very few people succeed in making sustainable long-term change with big declarations and going cold turkey. So it is at work too. You want to open up lines of communication? You want to give clearer direction? You want to feel more comfortable telling someone they’re wrong? What are the tiniest steps that feel reasonable to start implementing today, and regularly? In that same course where I learned the phrase that is the subject of this newsletter, I learned another term: “meeting-friendly adjustments.” It’s a shift that is so subtle that others wouldn’t even notice. Rolling back your shoulders, loosening your jaw, putting your feet flat on the ground. You do it enough times until it becomes the default. Maybe you say something to yourself while you do it. You’re conscious of becoming the leader you want to be without making a big deal of it.
Remind yourself what you’re working towards. Through the discomfort, it’s easy to get lost. The new awareness, the goal, needs to stay top of mind. Do you save or print an image that serves as a reminder? Place a new object on your desk? Write a phrase on a post-it? You’ll need the energy booster as you build new capacity.
Learn from the moments that pass. You won’t make 100 of the shots, but no one expects you to. Maybe as you work towards giving clearer feedback you still offer a vague response every now and then. What was it about that circumstance that made you fall back on the default behavior? Or more specifically, what was it about YOU in that circumstance? What does that data point teach you that can inform your capacity building practice?
Final thought: In what parts of your life – at work or otherwise – have you already evolved? How did you build capacity in those cases? See what you can learn from yourself and what you can apply to the choice you’re making now.
The Coaching Corner
Get out.
What is one meeting on your calendar this week that won’t require being in front of your computer and can be done as a walking meeting? “Getting the juices flowing” is a real thing, so take the reins and make it happen.
Recommendations
How can I not recommend this after the above discussion? HBR’s “A Guide to Taking Better Breaks at Work,” published last month.
With my interest in emotional granularity, I loved this week’s podcast episode of Rethinking with John Koenig, author of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
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