Deliberate Practice

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don’t think that’s quite it; it’s more like jazz. There is more improvisation.
~ Warren Bennis

A very brief post inspired by the quote above. The jazz metaphor is very powerful, we use it a lot when teaching leadership, but people tend to think that it can only be applied in theory.

It’s fascinating to understand the concerns: “If we don’t have someone guiding or directing, how are we going to move forward?”. Here is where we have to suspend our mental models (oh, I love saying that!) and be open to trying other ways of thinking, doing and being together.

Many workshop participants have said that we speak about leadership and group processes in very abstract terms, so I will provide more specific stories about what I’m talking about.

Kevin McCormick, Director of the Professional Development  Program at Equity Showcase Theatre and an instructor at the AWESOME Hart House theatre workshops sent this today…

” For each of us , it will one day come to an end .
There will be no more sunrises , no minutes , hours or days .
All the things you collected , whether  treasured or forgotten will be passed to someone else .
Your fame , your wealth and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance .
It will not matter what you owned or owed .
Your  grudges , frustrations  and jealousy  will finally disappear .
So to your hopes , ambitions , plans and to do lists  will expire .
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away .
It will not matter where you came from  , or what side of the tracks you lived .
At the end it won’t matter if you are beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant .

So what will matter ?

How will the value of your days be measured ?
What will matter is not what you bought but what you built .
Not what you got but what you gave .
What will matter is not your success but your significance .
What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught .
What will matter is that every act of intergrity , compassion , courage or sacrifice that empowered , enriched  or encouraged others to emulate your example .
What will matter is not your competence but your character .
What will matter is not how many people you knew but how many will feel a lasting loss when you are gone .
What will matter is not your memories  but the memories that live in those that learned to love from you
A life lived that matters is not of circumstance but of choice .”

_______________________________________________________________________

Taken from - ” Character Counts ” a Poem from  Josephson Institute of Ethics.

A friend sent me this link and I found it quite interesting and relevant:

The Unforgettable Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3, 2009

Posted on May 21, 2009 by Global MindShift

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.

Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

“…the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.”

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

“YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.”

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown — Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

“Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.”

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

“We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

It’s discomforting when I get questions or comments about leadership as a field of study. Occasionally I sense a bit of skepticism and judgment along with the questioning. The lack of awareness of leadership as a field/program of study is huge and it troubles me a little. I suppose that parents are not insinuating to their children to pursue leadership the way some do with medicine, law or engineering. And yet leadership is as important as any of such fields (or even more, given the current state of the world).

All biases aside, I believe that the educational system would benefit from the competencies that relational leadership teaches.  I wish more universities become as intentional as my Alma Mater Tecnologico de Monterrey in instilling leadership skills, knowledge and values across all programs.  In the next decade I wish to see an increase in students with B.A’s in leadership, majors in leadership or pursuing graduate studies in this field.

Just to provide a bit of information on leadership as a field of study, Lindsey McDougle posted a list of doctoral programs related to the study of leadership in her blog. Lindsey also created a wiki page for Leadership Studies, there you can find, among other things, a list of universities that offer leadership programs.

I suppose that people relate leadership with management, and just to give a couple of examples closer to home Guelph University offers a MA (Leadership) Program through the College of Management and Economics and at U of T the Rotman School of Management offers the UHN-Rotman Leadership Development Program and other management-oriented programs.

Regardless of the connection that management and leadership have, leadership is rarely recognized as a profession, it is usually an add-on to mainstream programs. But don’t we need more people who know how to collaborate with others effectively? People who feel empowered and know why and how to effect change? People who are enablers of other people, who understand relations and the process of working together?

And I am not writing this as an innocent, cheesy wish. I see the impact of the lack of relational leadership everywhere: in the bureaucratic, hierarchical or capitalist organizational structures that we propagate, in the superficial relationships that we create, in the conflict within groups, in the lack of reflective practices, in the fixed paradigms, ineffective meetings and in the systemic problems that we are facing.

To be part of such an important field and to know that it is not widely valued or understood is frustrating but also gives us a unique opportunity to do better!

Howard Book gave a brief presentation on Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Leadership last week during the University of Toronto Leadership Network (ULead) meeting. He is a very good presenter, engaging, clear and with a sense of humor. The content of his presentation was new to me and I want to share here it as I think is quite interesting.

First of all, Dr. Book shared his elevator speech, a statement such as ” I teach to see in the dark” then he explained how we are unaware of the forces that shape our behaviour and how important it is to look beneath the surface. He introduced an iceberg metaphor to represent how an organization operates and to show how power, culture, needs, group dynamics, etc. are underneath. Actually the metaphor reminded me of what I wrote regarding the dynamics of a restructuring process.

He also described the difference between management and leadership skills -this part was very reassuring since we teach this in our workshops (I will write more about this at a later post).

And the most important piece in his presentation was to explain that leaders meet the needs of followers by doing the following:

Affect Regulation: We can’t be active and reflective at the same time. Dr. Book talked about reflection, about asking questions and about the ability to contain the feelings of others. As I can see from searching affect regulation, it is a theory widely used in the Psychology field. I think he just gave a snapshot of this term in relation to leadership.

Affirmation: Under affirmation he described empathy and mentalization. Empathy as the way we understand the term, being able to put ourselves in the shoes of others and being aware of their emotions. Mentalization is a very interesting concept (I instantly related it to systems thinking), it is the capacity to understand the mental model or the rationale of others. Again, mentalization is a psychological term that I am unable to understand when searching for it -it seems to be related to the development of Self.

Affiliation: A sense of belonging. As simple as saying “good morning” to others.

Finally he shared a beautiful poem by Lao Tzu:

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves

In 2005 I participated in a Forum Theatre workshop at OISE’s Transformative Learning Centre. Before the workshop I didn’t know anything about Augusto Boal and the “Theatre of the Oppressed“; but after discovering this new world I knew it was possible to combine my two passions: leadership and theatre.

In Forum Theatre, the participants share stories about situations they want to change, conflicts that were not resolved in a fulfilling way or any other issue. In some contexts participants look at issues of oppression, but the way I’m using Forum is to practice conflict resolution and facilitation skills. Once stories are shared, participants vote on what story to play,  the story-teller becomes the director of the scene and also gets to play and replay the scene several times. When someone has a suggestion for this character (the one who told the story, the one we can change) then the person with the suggestion comes into the scene and plays it. Participants become spect-actors.

(If this doesn’t make sense please click on the link above)

A couple of weeks ago I facilitated a workshop on Conflict Resolution and we didn’t have enough time to practice the skills (active listening and raising concerns) so I decided to provide a space for people to practice, using their real-life challenges.

Overall it was a good experience and I hope participants benefited from it. However as a facilitator I think that something was missing. I think that it is very important to dedicate enough time for warm-up, maybe do some image theatre and then go into the Forum. I found that it was difficult for all participants to direct and cast and their stories were not very specific. It’s possible that the space wasn’t safe enough to address more specific issues or that the technique and purpose were not clear.

Actually, now that I’m thinking about the implementation, I missed the part in which we have to rehearse a random scene in a bus, as a way of modeling the technique…

I suppose I need to do more Forum Theatre facilitation to become really good at it!

During the past years I have learned a lot about the ways a person can be energized. Through taking the Myers-Briggs (MBTI) questionnaire and the work-styles inventory I have realized the challenges that introverts face when surrounded by extroverts.

Extroverts…

Are seen as “outgoing” or as a “people person.”
Feel comfortable in groups and like working in them.
Have a wide range of friends, know lots of people, like meeting people
Sometimes jump too quickly into an activity and don’t allow enough time to think it over.
Before they start a project, sometimes forget to stop and get clear on what they want to do and why.

Introverts…

Are seen as “reflective” or “reserved.”
Feel comfortable being alone and like things I can do on their own.
Prefer to know just a few people well.
Sometimes spend too much time reflecting and don’t move into action quickly enough.
Sometimes forget to check with the outside world to see if my ideas really fit the experience.

Retrieved from the Myers & Briggs Foundation

I want to share an article that has helped me understand more about the needs of others. It was written by Vicky Wilson from Inneract. (They have a newsletter with monthly insights and weekly inspirations).

Are you quiet by nature? Are you surrounded by extroverts on your team or in your organization? Do you find it difficult to be heard in meetings as others talk over you or interrupt you? Do you have things to share but just don’t know how to get them out?

In my coaching I have come across many individuals who say they “feel invisible” in a group or on their team.  They often find it a challenge to speak up and get heard, so they just give up trying.  And that is a shame!  This means the organization or team is missing out on hearing some great ideas and the opportunity to share in their expertise, while the team member slowly but surely disengages.

So I ask: “What role do you play in this?” Yes it is YOUR responsibility to ensure your colleagues hear you, but “how” is the question.  Here are a few tips that might help:

1. Speak to the meeting facilitator to share your challenge in speaking out or being heard. Let him/her know you have something of value you would like to add to the discussion and request that they call on you specifically. Only use this approach when you are confident you have something of value to share.
2. Have a discussion with the meeting facilitator and share your feedback on how you find it difficult to be heard and that you would like to work on strengthening this skill, ask them to share how they manage the extraverts on the team and determine if you could try any of their strategies.
3. Whenever possible request advance meeting agenda’s or connect with the meeting facilitator to get an idea of the meeting objectives and goals and what they see the role of the attendees to be.  This way you can think and plan your contributions and comments in advance.
4. Be prepared to get out of your comfort zone;
5. Try practicing what you want to say in advance of the meeting; out loud in front of a mirror if possible.  This way you will have the time to tweak it until you get it to sound the way you want it to.
6. Bounce your ideas off of a colleague to get their feedback.  Again this will give you the opportunity to make it more succinct if necessary.
7. Don’t sit where you always sit.  Sit in a different position around the table, preferably close to the facilitator, that way others will naturally be looking your way. Or alternatively sit beside someone you know contributes a lot and has the respect of the other attendees, someone they listen to.
8. Use a gesture of some sort to get the attention of others indicating that you have some thing to add, or contribute.
9. And finally, sometimes there is no other way to get heard than to interrupt, but do it nicely! Something like “I am sorry to interrupt…” or “I feel the need to interrupt at this point to ask/share…”

Excerpt from - ‘Seizing the Opportunity: Redefining the Challenge of Climate Change’.

“To contribute to this important discourse, we assert that the principle of the oneness of humankind must become the ruling principle of international life. This principle does not seek to undermine national autonomy or suppress cultural or intellectual diversity. Rather, it makes it possible to view the climate change challenge through a new lens – one that perceives humanity as a unified whole, not unlike the cells of the human body, infinitely differentiated in form and function yet united in a common purpose which exceeds that of its component parts. This principle constitutes more than a call for cooperation; it seeks to remold anachronistic and unjust patterns of human interaction in a manner that reflects the relationships that bind us as members of one human race. The earnest consideration of the place of this principle in international relations should not be seen as an abstract exercise; it is precisely this level of analysis that must be undertaken and this level of commitment secured in order to forge a coherent ethic for the resolution of the climate change crisis. In order to progress beyond a world community driven by a largely economic and utilitarian calculus, to one of shared responsibility for the prosperity of all nations, such a principle must take root in the conscience of the individual. In this way, we come to recognize the broader human agenda – which subsumes those of climate change, poverty eradication, gender equality, development, and the like – and seeks to use both human and natural resources in a way that facilitates the progress and well-being of all people.”

J who attended Power Shift shared the info above along with the following comment/question:

I found that many of the participants this weekend felt that effective change happens when we can present the benifits that change has to the individual, community, or institution. If we percieve reality through a lens driven by the principle of economics, of which most of the world is shaped, would not our thoughts and solutions be shaped in the same fashion?

What lens is needed to effect change? Do we need to suspend our current mental model and reach new mental spaces where we can innovate and create? Should we expect everyone to do the same? Or do we maintain the status quo lens in order to effect change in a way that belongs to the model that we operate in?

Maybe those who know more about climate change can provide some insight…

I wonder if Roger Martin’s integrative thinking approach is of value to address this concern.

Modern leadership needs integrative thinking. Integrative thinkers embrace complexity, tolerate uncertainty, and manage tension in searching for creative solutions to problems.

(The Art of Integrative Thinking, 2009)

From my perspective, integrative thinking is related to systemic thinking. During the CACUSS conference where Roger Martin gave a presentation I asked what was the connection between these two types of thinking. If I remember well, he said that systemic thinking could happen before engaging in the integrative thinking process.

Anyway, I wonder if it’s possible to integrate different frameworks in effecting change? If so, how does it look like? Sometimes I think we need to focus less on the philosophical debate and more in the actions, but do we really know what skills, knowledge and attitudes are needed?

Being aware of mental models is a good step towards resolving a complex problem -any problem. Awareness is related to reflection/feedback. And both awareness and reflection are part of a learning process. And this learning of making change (leadership) has to be practiced, intentionally.

On a second email, J mentioned something that I strongly agree with:

An attitude myself and many others have tried to adopt in our work for social change has been an attitude of learning. How would an attitude of learning guide our actions? How does one learn from the differing perspectives of others? What role does reflection play in our learning process towards effective social change?

And I will leave it there. With continuous learning, unlearning and reflection…

Last October I volunteered at the Learning Democracy by Doing Conference and learned a lot about community organizing and the issues of the global south. This year, I had a great learning experience facilitating three workshops at the Power Shift Conference in Ottawa.

There were two main reasons to be there: First, to contribute. To facilitate learning on topics such as collaborative leadership, conflict resolution and effective group facilitation skills. Second, to learn more about the issues and connect with those knowledgeable and active about sustainability and climate change.

It was very fulfilling to see so many young people at the conference. During the Perspectives on Leadership workshop participants brought to life the Social Change Model of Leadership Development (SCM) by talking about themselves, describing their organizations (mostly campus organizations) and how they’re benefitting their community.

Here is the model:

The biggest challenge that Power Shift participants are facing is what some of us call “The Big C”: Commitment.

Commitment is the psychic energy that motivates the individual to serve and that drives the collective effort. Commitment implies passion, intensity, and duration. It is directed towards both the group activity as well as it´s intended outcomes. (HERI, 1996)

For some reason, talking about commitment during the workshop made me think of the Popcorn metaphor: people pop at different times (we usually apply this metaphor to learning but it goes well with commitment). We should not expect others to act as passionately as we do regarding a cause; we need to find what their leadership stage is and what fires their passion, in order to be fully committed.

During the workshop we briefly engaged in a conversation about our expectations of others, different values and passions that group members have and ways to engage meaningfully with others. It seemed to me that those who share their stories about lack of commitment and lack of ownership were very frustrated.

I remember once Barry Posner said that we all care about something, in response to a question related to commitment. So it’s not that people don’t care, they just not care about the same issues that we do…

One of the most valuable aspects of the SCM is the impact and interconnection of the first 3 C’s:

Without commitment, knowledge of self is of little value. And without adequate knowledge of self, commitment is easily misdirected. Congruence, in turn, is most readily achieved when the person acts with commitment and knowledge of self.

If we don’t know what fires our passion, if we don’t know enough about ourselves and what’s important to us, it will be quite difficult to develop commitment –or any of the C’s.

Today I learned about Donald Schon and his ideas about reflection:

The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation (Schon, 1983, 68).

More than half of my work involves designing and facilitating workshops for students at the University of Toronto. Today I was delivering a workshop on “Facilitation Skills” to a very difficult group. From the very beginning I could tell something was off. During the workshop my level of frustration was increasing at the same rate as their level of disinterest. At some point, while giving feedback to a group who was doing a presentation to their peers, I Iost it and my feedback came out as an euphemism.

At that point I felt that my credibility as a facilitator disappeared and obviously the group’s vibe completely changed to confusion, maybe anger.

Interestingly, the topic on “vibes watching” was part of the curriculum and I decided to turn my mistake into a teachable moment, what a great way to talk about group vibes and the role of a facilitator!

I stopped the activity to talk about what was going on and why we had gone to that point; after being the target of students’ rants and actively listening to what they were saying (”you didn’t give clear instructions”, “you didn’t ask us if we knew this topic”, “you didn’t give constructive feedback”, “you could have done another breathing exercise to calm us”, etc.) I asked them to be objective, take responsibility for their behaviour and to explain what they thought was going on with me as a facilitator.

Accurately, they explained that I might have felt disrespected, frustrated and distracted with their chatting; they failed to see that my frustration was also fueled by the absence of critical thinking while doing the activity. They provided good feedback and good suggestions for improvement and for the first time in an hour they were quiet and engaged. I really hope they got something out of this reflection in action.

I certainly got a lot out of what happened and learned a great deal. Being through a challenge like today’s was a good reminder that there is always room for improvement!