To what extent are you experiencing the 5 elements of flourishing?

(What emotions are you experiencing? Image by Gino Crescoli from Pixabay)

Previous experience matters. A lot. Previous experience can help me flourish, and when I don’t have the needed previous experience, I’m limited and at times floundering. Check out these 3 examples: 

• Your child started school 2 weeks ago. She’s smart, hardworking, and sociable. She has no previous experience with school and is not yet experiencing friendship from her classmates. What difference would it make if your child had experience with school and was experiencing friendship with her classmates?
• You’ve started teaching at an international Christian school. You’re smart and hardworking. You’ve never experienced living abroad before, you’ve no experience with the local culture or language, and you’ve never experienced teaching middle school before. What difference would it make if you had had previous experience with these things?
• As a brand new leader, you’re facing a significant crisis. You’re smart and hardworking. You’ve never experienced being in a position of leadership, never experienced a significant crisis before (in your family or in your work), and (consequently) have never experienced a crisis being effectively addressed. What difference would it make if you had had previous experience with these things?

Like I said, experience matters. A lot. Previous experience can help us flourish—like experience with school, with teaching middle schoolers, with addressing a crisis. 

Photo by Hiếu Hoàng

I also recognize that what I am currently experiencing helps me flourish or hinders me from flourishing, for example:

Experiencing ___ helps me flourish.	Experiencing ___ hinders me from flourishing.
Passionate purpose	Passionless purpose
Resilient well-being	Fragile well-being
Healthy relationships	Toxic relationships
Transformative learning	Learning only to get a reward
Helpful resources	Unhelpful or inadequate resources

*Please note: I find it helpful to use tools from my toolbox that are appropriate for those I’m working to help. Given this blog post focuses on international Christian school leaders, I based the 5 elements of flourishing on ACSI’s model.

Let me explain:

(1) Passionate purpose: Your international Christian school has a mission and vision. 

• Are you passionate about them? 
• Do you feel that they’re like a calling?
• Do you feel that you have real agency in carrying them out? That you directly contribute to their achievement? That your work is deeply meaningful? 
• Do they drive your decision-making?

To what extent are you consistently experiencing passionate purpose?

(2) Resilient well-being: Our world is volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA)—think pandemic, war and terrorism, stock market fluctuations and inflation, and information overload. Flourishing in such a world requires resilience: 

• How are you at managing stress and overwhelm?
• Are you quick to recover?
• Would you characterize your well-being as strong, supple, tough, and buoyant?
• Do you feel safe and healthy?
• Are you eating well, getting enough sleep, and getting regular exercise?
• Is your workplace culture safe, healthy, nurturing, and Christ-centered?

To what extent are you consistently experiencing resilient well-being?

(3) Healthy relationships: Relationships matter, affect us personally, and impact mission/vision achievement. Are your work relationships Christ-centered, respectful, and collaborative? Do your work relationships reflect…

• Deep trust (instead of mistrust)? 
• Healthy conflict (instead of conflict avoidance)? 
• Contagious commitment (instead of a lack of commitment)? 
• Accountability (instead of lack of accountability)?
• Focus on group results (instead of inattention to group results or focusing on individual results)? 

To what extent are you consistently experiencing healthy relationships? To learn more, explore the 5 dysfunctions of a team: book, model, and video:

(4) Transformative learning: God calls us to be Christ-like, something that involves deep change, that involves transformation. Does your learning result in deep, measurable change…

• In mindset (like moving from an inward mindset to an outward mindset)? 
• In the models you use (so that you actively and systematically use the 4 disciplines of organizational health and the 4 disciplines of execution to develop a flourishing organizational culture)? 
• In the practices you use (like changing from ruinous empathy feedback to radical candor feedback)?

To what extent do you consistently experience transformative learning?

(5) Helpful resources (including expertise): Flourishing at an international Christian school involves resources:

• Does your school have the staff it needs to carry out your mission/vision?
• How helpful are the facilities, grounds, technology, and furnishings in terms of carrying out the mission, vision, and best practice?
• How helpful is professional development your school provides?
• How sufficient and helpful are your school’s financial resources?
• How helpful and current are your instructional materials?
• How helpful are your school’s human resource policies and practices?

To what extent are you consistently experiencing helpful resources (including expertise)?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

Question 1: As a leader, to what extent are you experiencing these 5 elements of flourishing? Take this assessment to find out. Use the following scale: SD strongly disagree • D disagree • N neutral • A agree • SA strongly agree.

Here are the 5 items. Circle 1 response. If you are unsure, give it the lower rating:

1. I’m consistently experiencing passionate purpose. SD D N A SA
2. I’m consistently experiencing resilient well-being. SD D N A SA
3. I’m consistently experiencing healthy relationships. SD D N A SA
4. I’m consistently experiencing transformative learning. SD D N A SA
5. I’m consistently experiencing helpful resources (including expertise). SD D N A SA

Step 1—Tally Data:	Step 2: Determine Score	Step 3: Assess Score (circle)
# SD _____ X 1 = _____	Total points ___ / 5 = _____	0-3.74: Unhealthy
# D _____ X 2 = _____		3.75-3.99: Somewhat Healthy
# N _____ X 3 = _____		4.0-4.24: Healthy
# A _____ X 4 = _____		4.25-5.0: Flourishing
# SA _____ X 5 = _____
Total points —> = _____

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

Question 2: What can you do to maintain/increase your flourishing? Things I’m doing include:

1. Passionate purpose: Talking with a colleague about flourishing and writing blog posts about flourishing.
2. Resilient well-being: Eating well, getting enough sleep, and getting regular exercise.
3. Healthy relationships: Sharing my vulnerabilities, apologizing, asking questions, and working to use an outward mindset.
4. Transformative learning: Deepening my understanding of flourishing such that I more regularly and intentionally use a trust/inspire mindset and the 8 drivers of a flourishing culture as I coach/consult for others.
5. Helpful resources (including expertise): Using learning materials (books, blogs, podcasts, webinars, e-newsletters, online classes) from experts, including ACSI, Best Christian Workplace Institute, The Table Group, and Franklin Covey.

What about you? How much does previous experience matter? How much does current experience matter? As a leader, to what extent are you experiencing these 5 elements of flourishing? What can you do to maintain/increase your flourishing?

Here are some posts related to flourishing:

• What’s your focus?
• What questions are you focusing on?
• What’s the problem?
• How much do motives matter?
• Why improve?

Get flourishing!

Michael

P.S. Bonus! Here’s a list of 10 quotations from things I’ve read that contain a form of the word experience:

1. “God says the abundant life is not out of reach or too difficult. It really can be ours. What would an abundant, rich, and meaningful team experience look like?” (High-Impact Teams: Where Healthy Meets High Performance, loc 465)
2. “What two or three action steps could you take in the next thirty days to improve your team’s experience of life-giving work?” (Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being, loc 1055)
3. “By gathering advice from people whose experience and knowledge you respect, you increase the likelihood of creating a vision that will work” (The Work of Leaders: How Vision, Alignment, and Execution Will Change the Way You Lead, loc 861).
4. “Once someone is on board, it’s not only hiring others for culture that matters—you also have to incorporate culture into employees’ work and experiences throughout their life span at the company” (Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an Irresistible Workplace, loc 1266).
5. “To inspire is to take an experience and imbue it with purpose, to take a job and make it meaningful” (Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others, loc 343).
6. “The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right” (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, loc 2782).
7. “People who can learn from their experiences and use those lessons to make positive changes in their behavior will advance quickly” (Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less, loc 2407).
8. “We can start by asking our students purpose-focused questions, such as: “What does ‘school’ mean to you?” “What do you hope to get out of being here at school?” “What about our school brings you joy?” “What is missing from your experiences at this school?” “What makes you feel demotivated at school?” “What are your biggest hopes and dreams, and how do your experiences at this school fit—or not fit—into them?” These questions can offer a diagnostic of how well students are flourishing in their minds, spirits, emotions, and relationships—in other words, in the wholeness of human experience” (Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools, loc 534).
9. “…control eludes us because we are almost always looking ahead, trying to ensure control of future outcomes rather than making the most of the moment. Try instead to make each day an optimal experience” (Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company, loc 1822).
10. “…we de-emphasize the human experience when we are hyper-focused on traditional business metrics” (Good Comes First: How Today’s Leaders Create an Uncompromising Company Culture That Doesn’t Suck, loc 1354).