Teamership: Mojo May
Consider if there are ways to reframe your approach to any given day, week, month or year. Photo by Jordan Opel on Unsplash
I’m unsure if you have noticed, but it’s already the end of the first week of May. Others that I have spoken to have shared that the first third of the year has flown by for them - and I can empathise. I’m not sure where the first four months of the year have gone.
My word for the year is momentum.
In all aspects of my life, I am hoping to make and sustain meaningful progress on things that matter. A third of the way into the year, I wouldn’t say it has been a raging success. I have made a few minor adjustments, but largely I have been making incremental progress. That’s not bad, it’s just not what I wanted.
As I was taking some time off in the school holidays, I was reminded that my daughter decided to ditch a New Year’s Resolution and go for monthly ones. That made sense to me - a year is a long time when you’re in primary school, so why think about the whole year?
Borrowing from both of those thoughts - my theme for the year and my daughter’s monthly approach, I decided that this month would be Momentum May. I shared this with my clever friend, Alena Bennett. She wisely suggested that instead of Momentum May that a more useful frame could be Mojo May.
She was right. I love it!
I’ve written previously about the importance of mojo - and what you can do when your mojo is a no-show. In the context of Teamership, our mojo is a crucial component of bringing our best and supporting others to do the same.
All of that is true, but it’s not why I personally loved the reframe from Momentum to Mojo.
I love Mojo May because it’s got the right intent behind it. It gave a different and more energising context to the activities that I wanted to do.
The intent of sharing this with you is to highlight the difference that the way we frame our actions can make. When I was considering framing up for Momentum, the central question was “What activities will give me momentum?”. Framing around Mojo has me asking “What activities will give me mojo?”
Even though both questions led me to the same list of activities, I am approaching them in a way that felt lighter and less like I was ticking boxes. It helps me to sustain a sense of agency - that I am an author, not a passenger in my year (and life). I’m getting to activities and behaviour changes that have been a long time coming (some of them over two years in the making)
The point of sharing all of this is twofold.
Firstly, please don’t underestimate the value of mojo to your performance - and that of your team. Pay attention to it and consider what activities you can do to support a sense of energy and agency for yourself and others.
Secondly, irrespective of whether “mojo” is the right frame for you, please consider if there are useful ways to reframe your approach to any given day, week, month or year. It is probably good to know that I’m not one of those people that thinks that you just need to tell yourself to be positive. That feels fraudulent to me. Any reframing needs to feel true and meaningful.
Some questions for you to consider this week:
What are you doing to look after your mojo?
Can you think of activities that would help you regain or sustain your mojo?
Is there a way for you to reframe actions to make it more likely for you to implement your desired behaviours?