I believe my son's favourite book, "Oh the Places You'll Go!" is the best leadership book ever written!🥇

By encouraging readers of all ages to embrace life's ups and downs, keep moving forward and believe in themselves as they boldly pursue their aspirations, it teaches fundamental leadership skills.

Lets delve deeper into the key themes from this classic story and my thoughts on how it helps us think about the way we inspire our teams.

3 Key Themes from Dr Seuss

Embrace Your Inner “Weirdo” - The book acknowledges embraces individual DIFFERENCES and signals that it's okay to stand out from the crowd. It encourages readers to embrace their unique qualities and quirks rather than conforming.

Avoid the Waiting Place - Dr. Seuss warns against getting trapped in the "Waiting Place" and encourages readers to break free from complacency and TAKE CHARGE to shape their own future.

How to "Unslump" Yourself - Whilst acknowledging that "un-slumping yourself is not easily done", the book encourages cultivating RESILLIANCE, DETERMINATION and OPTIMISM to get unstuck and find "the bright places where Boom Bands are playing."

Ideas for Action 👉

Here's how you can translate this creative masterpiece of a book into stronger team connections;

• Normalise Setbacks & Learning from Mistakes: Cultivate resilience by demonstrating a positive attitude in the face of setbacks which makes people feel safe in your care. Openly talk about your own setbacks with your team and encourage them to do the same without fear of blame. Crucially, share what you've learnt from overcoming them to cultivate a learning culture.
• Celebrate Achievements: It's so important to celebrate the achievements, big and small, of your team collectively and publicly. This builds people's self-esteem, fosters a sense of camaraderie and motivates team members to continue striving for excellence. This could be giving them a shout out at your weekly team catch up or giving them a token of appreciation like a hand-written thank you note or tickets to a special work event.
• Create Opportunities for Friendships to Blossom: Actively encouraging your team to build a support system and a work "best friend" is not a luxury - it can be the difference between people staying or leaving your company. Gallup's research has shown the importance of work friends is having someone you can rely on through thick and thin and has your back. These authentic friendships deepen employees' sense of ownership, enable people to be more effective and feel more able to share their "inner weirdo" by being themselves. Making time for spontaneous social interactions is important as well as creating events for teams to bond.

Creating an environment of psychological safety is at the heart of all Art After Dark workshops.

We help you carve out time for your team to connect and get to know each other as interesting, fully rounded humans so they can unslump themselves whenever needed!

Painting🖼️

This week I painted the cover of "Oh the Places You'll Go!" I hope brings back fond childhood memories for you?

As always, I encourage you to take a moment out of your busy week to reflect on what I've shared whilst watching this short timelapse of me painting!

Some people have started to ask me if I sell art kits for their teams to help with their wellbeing and connection.

I'm considering curating some affordable kits of my favourite art supplies so if you're interested in this please let me know. 🎨