I got an A for 2020. 

I know, we all did. For our resilience, humor, courage, and grit during this epic time in our world.

But I really got an A. 

Because I gave it to myself back in January, 2020.

Each year for the last 10 years I have used an exercise from the Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Ben Zander to chart my path for the coming year. 

Ben Zander who is a conductor and teacher found that often, students would ask him at the end of a semester why they didn’t receive an A.  To him it was obvious – their behavior wasn’t “A” behavior.  But he realized that merely making a rubric of how to do well in the class wasn’t translating into students behaving as the best versions of themselves.  Instead, he decided to shift the paradigm and make the students draft a letter to him at the beginning of the semester as if it was the end of the semester looking back and share how they achieved their A in the class. He asked them to focus not on the A but on how they would behave to achieve that goal and most importantly, how they would feel having achieved the behavior. 

The letters were beautifully written, expansive, poetic,  and ultimately transformative for his students. 

After years of writing out resolutions that never stuck my husband and I decided to shift to this narrative to start our year. Trust me I learned giving your partner resolutions each year just does not work. 

We covered all aspects of our lives including work, family, personal health, and relationships.  We wrote about each with how we would behave and also specific goals. And we put the letters away after taking the time to write them only to re-read them to each other at the end of the year before writing our next letter. 

Last week I pulled out my letter from 2020.  My letter was all about focusing on family – deepening connections and being available to friends. It focused on self-care goals that I’ve been trying to achieve for many years but had never taken the time to write them with specificity in my letter. 

Like meditation.  Something I’ve urged on others but have struggled with myself.  I wrote that I would meditate three times a week.  Who knew then that a global pandemic would slow me down enough to achieve the goal of meditation every day?

And I wrote not about the number of clients I would serve but how I would serve them – with excellence, humor, and integrity.  And that specificity of behavior helped to serve me in my business which I didn’t know would change so abruptly and exponentially as a result of the pandemic.  Other than two in-person programs my work went completely virtual.  But it didn’t matter, after a moment of panic about how to share my energy in a virtual setting, I realized what I had known for years, that growing a leader’s presence can happen from anywhere. Because as I wrote in my letter to myself how we show up as leaders is, I believe, one of the most important skills for a leader to focus on in order to achieve all their other goals. 

Yes, there were some things in the letter that I didn’t achieve. And while living through 2020, I thought that it was not the year that I had hoped for or expected. In the end, it turns out as I re-read the letter to myself that I wrote in January 2020, the important things, the things that really matter – focusing on the people I love and work with – those things, went exactly as I had written.

I’m excited to write my letter for 2021 and watch as the possibilities unfold with a plan for how I will show up in the world with my passion, intention, and excellence.  After all, I already have the “A” now I just get to live it.

An Outlaw Leader takes the time to give themselves an A for the year before it happens and then they just lead.

I’m an Outlaw Leader with an EDGE: Explore, Dream, Grow & Excite™  are you?

Outlaw Leadership™ 2021.