I’ve been thinking lately about the difference between mistakes and failure, especially when expectations for leaders and events are high and a lot of people depend on things to go well.

Because even in well-managed projects, mistakes happen.

Personally, I wish they didn’t. As a perfectionist, I don’t ever want mistakes. Yet I know communication gets missed. Someone misunderstands expectations. A detail falls through the cracks. Sometimes the mistake is small and, yes, sometimes it leads to big consequences. Still, I don’t call these mistakes failures.
To me, failure is more deeply connected to what happens – or doesn’t happen – after the mistake.

Do we spend our energy figuring out whose fault it was?

Or do we learn from it? Do we adjust? Do we communicate honestly about what happened and what needs to change moving forward?
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That difference matters.

After every major event we produce, there’s one thing we schedule:  a rest day.
 
I grew up hearing my grandmother call herself “lazy bones” while maintaining an immaculate house, baking cakes (yes, plural), preparing meals, caring for others, and leaving behind more in a day than the rest of the family could accomplish in a week.
 
She would say it almost casually, as if it were true.
 
I never believed her, but I did absorb something else: the idea that rest was suspect. That no matter how much had been done, it was never quite enough to justify stopping.
 
I still feel that tension.

​Empathy is often seen as a soft skill but make no mistake—it is one of the most challenging and essential tools for effective leadership.
 
Jon Micheels Leiseth, Theatre B’s artistic director, offered a powerful reminder of this during his Creative Mornings session titled Threads. He shared a personal story of feeling miserable while navigating the diverse needs of his collaborators while adjusting to new directing challenges. A mentor’s advice helped him refocus: the project itself is the baby.
 
This advice shifted his perspective from managing people’s emotions to birthing the work. It allowed him to align his skills and energy with the purpose of the project.
 
In both creative and business settings, empathy must be used wisely to avoid frustration. Otherwise, compassion overload can lead to a resource drain.

​Trust is a strange, living thing, isn't it? It breathes in the spaces between promises and deliveries, between what’s said and what’s done. It’s nurtured through small actions and gestures, yet it can sometimes feel as elusive as smoke.
 
Why do some clients trust us immediately, while others seem to withhold it forever? What is the alchemy behind trust?
 
Let’s start with a simple ingredient: delivery.

​Whenever two or more people meet in an office, conference room, or workspace, issues may arise. After all, differing opinions are a side effect of being human.
 
To prevent something small from shifting into a serious problem, we’ve learned at Reach Partners that open discussion can benefit the productivity of our team. Addressing small and large matters early on can lead to a healthier organizational culture.
 
As much as we like each other, Anita and I acknowledge and accept we’ll have challenges working together. To address these, we keep “issues” as a weekly agenda item at our staff meetings. By giving ourselves a consistent time and place for the conversation, we can prepare for dialogue instead of argument. This allows us to focus our work time on client projects instead of stewing over issues. It is one way we value each other, deflate disagreements, and take action to move forward.

​It’s hard to take time for yourself when the calendar is full, but I’m learning that might be the perfect time to do so.
 
Recently, Rachel and I took an online course on self-compassion from experts Kristin Neff – if you’ve ever heard anyone referencing self-compassion, it was likely her! – and Chris Germer. They have been working together since 2010.
 
We didn’t have an extra 12 hours in our schedule, but making time for that course was worth it. We want to be the best human beings and project managers that we can be. We accomplish this by learning, growing, and expanding our thinking.

When a team invites Reach Partners to join them, we’re asked to provide focus on a project. Even if the team members work side-by-side each day, they often need help with the pace of the project – the way a project’s progress moves forward.
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Different than a timeline or milestones, pacing is about understanding when to pause or slow down and when to speed ahead. Every milestone in a project’s plan deserves its own sense of pace.

We talk a lot about communication. Mostly because it’s hard to do well, and it helps to keep stakeholders on the same page. But there’s something else that motivates us.
 
Identifying the audience is one of the biggest challenges we face in communicating well. Who needs to hear a message? What do they need to know? When do they need to know it?
 
Communication influences how an audience perceives a project or event.

How and when you present a message is as important as the words or images you choose to share. Apply empathy and take time to figure out what your audience needs to know.

​This year, Reach Partners celebrates 20 years.
 
Twenty years!
 
That’s countless hours of coordinating events, gathering people in conversation, helping work get done, communicating key messages, training volunteers, facilitating meetings, pushing and encouraging, staying within budget, outlining the scope, staying up late, waking up early, making mistakes, asking forgiveness, and making right the mistakes we made.
 
Twenty years!
 
As we celebrate this milestone, we recognize that we are who we are largely because of the values that we uphold and practice. We are intentional about how we do our work and who we do it with. This has led us to the best partners a business could ask for and we are immensely grateful for that.
 
So, in honor of our anniversary, we want to reflect on a few moments from the past two decades that speak to our values. Of course, there are so many more moments than we have space for, but here is a sampling:

​Whenever we plan an event, an in-depth meeting, a social gathering, or virtual experience Reach Partners will always argue for the same thing. Every time.
 
This thing is the most important detail for every planned interaction. It is the life blood of our work and what drives us to do better every day. Most importantly it’s the power, the energy that fuels the work at hand.
 
How do you tap into this energy? How do you make it work for you? Draw the right audience? Craft the right marketing activities? Align stakeholders? Create value?
 
You start by defining purpose.