Trust, Curiosity, and the Work Ahead
At the start of the year, instead of arriving with a neatly packaged set of goals, I asked my staff a different question:
What themes should guide us this year?
I wasn't going to focus on metrics or resolutions. Just, plain old themes.
What they offered back was familiar, practical, and quietly profound:
- trust your team
- ask for help
- be more curious
- delegate projects
- get more involved
- learn the tools more
- get things done
- connect to what’s real
Hearing their words, I felt two things at once: gratitude, and recognition. Gratitude for their honesty. Recognition because this is the work I’ve been circling for years, aiming now to name it more clearly in my own practice, and through this collaboratorium.
What strikes me most is that none of these themes are flashy. There’s no grandstanding here. No performative ambition. Instead, there’s a collective leaning toward trust, agency, competence, and grounded-ness. We move towards ways of working that acknowledge how much strain people are already carrying, and how much care the work actually requires.
Trust your team. Ask for help. Delegate projects.
While these sound like management hacks, they actually signify relational commitments. They assume that leading isn’t about holding everything tightly, but about creating clarity and safety so that work can move through many hands. In a moment when so much responsibility has quietly been pushed onto individuals, we must push back and insist that shared work deserves shared ownership. Organizations might sometimes be built on heroic effort, but they’re sustained on mutual reliance.
Be more curious. Learn the tools more. Get more involved.
Curiosity shows up as disciplined attention, learning what’s actually in front of us, understanding the systems we’re using, and staying close enough to the work to notice when something needs adjustment. This is the artist-and-scientist posture I return to again and again: observe first, judge later. Curiosity, in this sense, isn’t a luxury. It’s how we avoid drifting into assumption or burnout.
Get things done.
There’s a refreshing humility in this one. It’s not about urgency theater or endless strategizing. It’s about follow-through. About respecting one another enough to finish what we start. Compassion, after all, isn’t only how we listen—it’s also how reliably we act. Completion is a form of care.
And then there’s the final theme, the one I came up with myself:
Connect to what’s real.
This is the through-line of my work: on my website, in my writing, and in how I try to lead. Real people. Real things. Real needs. Real care. When we stay connected to what’s real, we make better decisions. We waste less energy. We choose reflection over reaction. We stop asking individuals to absorb alone what should be addressed together.
Taken together, this list feels less like a to-do list and more like a shared ethic. A reminder that good work doesn’t come from pretending we have it all figured out, but from trusting one another enough to learn as we go.
This year, I’m holding these themes close as rules, and as companions. They’re shaping how I show up as a leader, a writer, and a collaborator. And they reinforce what I continue to believe: when we follow compassion, lead with reflection, and work with commitment, the work doesn’t just get done, it gets more meaningful.
That feels like a good way to begin.
How is your year beginning?