We extend a challenge to our listeners: to spark joy and strengthen connections within your teams and communities over the next 90 days. Through intentional acts of celebration and connection, we explore the transformative power of shared experiences in fostering a sense of belonging and support.
As part of this journey, the Leadership Vision team shares their participation in a deeply meaningful 5k race for breast cancer awareness, marking a tradition of resilience and unity. This episode serves as a poignant example of how collective actions can significantly impact our sense of community and belonging.
Join us in embracing this challenge to create lasting, positive change.
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Speaker 1:
You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that people are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Friberg and today on the podcast, dr Linda Shubring, our president, shares a brief message about the transformative power of creating moments of connection and celebration within our teams and communities. She's going to be issuing all of us a simple yet impactful challenge to stir goodness and create a bond with your team or family through an intentional activity or event over the next 90 days. So let's embrace this opportunity to make a difference, one act of goodness at a time, and join us in making those connections stronger.
Speaker 2:
In today's episode of the Leadership Vision Podcast, have you ever been part of a team or organization that was known for their celebration or how they intentionally connected In one agency that we work with? They model what it means to celebrate each other and celebrate with each other. They do significant work as public servants. They put in long hours, they work hard and they take time to celebrate contributions, to create memories. They even host chili cookoffs and create contests around bingo, basketball and even the Bachelor. One year they even had a 30-day weight loss challenge and they were competing by department. Now teams got really creative and they started to bring in boxes of donuts to try to sabotage the other teams. It was memorable and people still smile thinking about those days, and part of the reason why is that we remember rituals and shared experiences when we were surprised and delighted, and the times when there was such great laughter, sometimes to the point of tears. Our brains, then, are open when we're surprised and rituals level the playing field. It reminds us that we're all in this together. Think of the Zoom days, when you saw your executive's kitchen or your CIO in a hoodie, or dogs or children that were running through the background. Those moments, I don't think they were interruptions as much as reminders of our common humanity. Part of what it means to grow a positive team culture is to create those bonds that remind us that we share in this life and we have the ability to stir goodness in our common humanity. So these points of connection can cultivate a sense of belonging and a reminder that we belong to one another. We belong to one another, and it gives us a chance to focus, as teams, on what the real important work is that we are doing together or the work that we have on hand. When we belong and when we feel we belong, we get to decide how we will participate. Usually, the feeling of belonging invites us to be active or at least present. That feeling can help us be connected to the people and causes that make us feel most alive. Lighthearted gatherings or an intentional break in the work can serve to bond us together in positive ways. So we have a challenge for you. Our challenge to you is to find some ways to stir goodness with an activity or event in the next 90 days. Our advice is to create some belonging out of who you are, out of your passions, out of your interests, and maybe it looks like a meal, maybe it looks like a coffee hour or a book club night, or you sign up to serve in your community or you find a race or a fundraiser to be part of.
Speaker 2:
I remember one company that I was in. The CEO challenged us to run the Medtronic Twin Cities 10K. Now for a 10K or 6.2 miles, now for a 10K or 6.2 miles. I think you actually have to train for it and I remember the chilly October morning. I remember the nerves. I remember the COO cracking jokes at the starting line and I remember especially when one of our seasoned consultants in her 60s blew past our CEO with a wave and a smile. I remember those who came to cheer and those who volunteered along the course. What happened in that time not even just the race, but leading up to the race is goodwill was stirred across generations in our company and as I'm talking, I'm wondering if you have examples of those memorable moments that you've had as part of a family or a team, that you've had as part of a family or a team. So our challenge is to stir goodness with something intentional with your family or your team. The next 90 days at Leadership Vision, we are doing a 5k race, though I hesitate to call it a race, so more on that in a moment.
Speaker 2:
The race actually is around a passion area of mine, and it was a community that helped save my life. In 2010, I joined a community I never really wanted to be part of. It was the cancer community, breast cancer in particular, and during the treatments and surgeries of 2011, I had to choose how I would now participate in the community that I now belong to. I didn't want to be a victim, but the suffering was real. I didn't want to wear pink every day, but there was something that happened in me when I showed up with my loved ones to a sea of pink at Minnesota's Race for the Cure at the Mall of America. I was bald, frail and scarred, and to see the sea of pink and the resilience and the courage and the stories and the feather boas and the balloons there was this love that was communicated in the community and I was inspired to keep going, and we've tried to participate every year since. So this is my 14th race for the cure as a survivor and I thought this year, why don't we invite some others? Brian and I and our family are racing for a cure to share in the mission to end breast cancer forever.
Speaker 2:
Our team, most creatively, is called Leadership Vision, so you can find us. Probably there's a link in the show notes for that. If you want to join us, please, please do. I hesitate to call it a race, because what we do in this particular race is that we wear ridiculous amounts of pink and we walk together in the community of survivors and their loved ones. You'll see funny team names, you will see tears, you will see laughter and you'll be reminded that we are in this together. It's a very fun morning and this year it happens to be on Saturday. So if you're in the Twin Cities and want to join us at Viking Lakes, we encourage you to sign up.
Speaker 2:
You can join the Leadership Vision race team. You can also race in honor of a loved one, or just sign up and come. You can cheer from afar. Let us know if you would like us to walk or run in honor of a loved one in your life. And you know what, if it's not Race for the Cure? Our challenge once again, to find some way, some ritual to stir goodness in the next 90 days, a way to bond with your team or your family, to create these rituals of connection. Connection really is an opportunity to press pause on the moments, the busyness of the day, and honor people, the people that you do the work with, because in that pause you are communicating that the time and investment is worth it. Rituals of celebration provide necessary detachment from the pressures of the day to day and they remind us that communities are important, that we are important. So, in this sometimes divided, isolated and polarized world, let's make choices to stir the healing our communities and maybe just ourselves.
Speaker 1:
So join us helping you build positive team culture. If you found value from this episode or any of our other free online resources, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps spread the word about our podcast. We would also love it if you could subscribe to the podcast, follow us on social media, do all those things. We've also got a free email newsletter that you can join. Just go to leadershipvisionconsultingcom slash, subscribe and sign up today. My name is Nathan Freeberg and, on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.