I have been facilitating so much training lately, and I love it!  The one thing I enjoy most about training is that I learn so much from the participants.  I know, it’s supposed to be the other way around, so I’m hoping they are learning from me also!

I’m sorry to break the news to you, but most business and leadership training is not new information; even Purple Ink training is not revolutionary topics.  It’s reminders, tips, tricks, and the facilitation of ideas on how others make work and communication happen.  So, every time I get the privilege of sharing with others, I also get these reminders myself!

Something that has happened in recent weeks, though, is that I have also been facilitating more frequently to church groups.  So many of our “business and leadership” topics are, of course, really just life lessons and apply as much or more in our roles as parents, spouses, volunteers, and community leaders as they do in our work lives as team members, business leaders, and employees.

This thought really hit me recently while listening to a Gallup Coaches webinar.  When encouraging people to apply StrengthsFinder in their lives, Gallup has long used the phrase, “Name it, Claim it, and Aim it.”  Name your Strengths by taking the assessment; claim them by diving into the report, highlighting what applies, sharing it with others, being proud of them; and aim them by intentionally applying your talents and strengths on a daily basis, leading to a more fulfilled life.  But, on this recent webinar, the speaker said that a former Gallup employee also used the phrase “learn it, love it, and live it”.  This really hit home with me.

If we take “learnings” into our entire lives – not just our workspace – and learn to love and live them, it will make a much greater impact on us.  Let’s think of a few examples, both of which are topics that I facilitate in the work and church environment:

1. Time management. We don’t really manage time, of course; we manage ourselves.  We set goals, make choices, prioritize, and develop systems and methods to make them happen. We may have department calendars vs. family calendars, but the concepts are all the same.  We can still learn, love, and live.  Actually, the more we integrate our entire lives, the better we will be at establishing what is most important, prioritizing, and making the best choices happen.  It’s too easy to put work above family/faith time unless we set some boundaries and goals on who we really want to be and where we want to spend our time.  Learn, love, live.

2. Strengths. The whole concept of strengths is about living a more fulfilled life.  We might more easily engage our competition strength on the tennis court and our achiever strength at work, if we choose, but we won’t be completely fulfilled by getting all 5 only at work or only at home.  We can truly learn, love, and live them if we understand how they apply to our work, our parenting, our relationships, our activity/volunteer choices, and our faith life all at the same time!

The real aha, though, is that by constantly engaging these learnings as opposed to only thinking about them in one piece of our lives, it becomes easier ALL of the time.  Learn it once; love it and live it all the time.