🥳 Celebrating 250 Editions of The Switchboard!

Lessons Learned, Best Practices Articles and Most Shared Interviews

It’s time to celebrate because this is the 250th edition of The Switchboard! I’m excited to share this milestone with y’all. Thank you. As I reflect back, I’m sharing three highlights with optional challenges for you to make your own:

• Lessons Learned

• Best Practices Articles

• Most Shared Interviews

In return, I’m asking you as community members — what have you learned, what are your favorite best practices articles and interviews? Let me know in the comments or reply to this email. It means so much to hear from you and shapes the future directions I take with The Switchboard.

My Top 5 Lessons Learned

1. 🎉 Celebrate Others

Every interview I write recognizes the accomplishments of someone. It feels great to champion a person for their craft. There are many ways to achieve this — publicly via a platform, personally sending a thank you or letting their manager know how much someone matters. Tamara Myles reminded us how important this outreach is recently. It also has a ripple effect and makes me and hopefully, you, happier too!

💌 Challenge: Who will you celebrate or thank today? Tag someone or message them. Let me know how it goes.

2. 📚 Share Your Knowledge

The leaders I’ve featured have been generous with their time, energy and expertise, sharing pivotal projects — strategies for building a career community with Jason Yoong, the confetti approach with Katia Verresen, the spreadsheet approach to life with Sylvia Acevedo, “Unreasonable Hospitality” with Will Guidara, career coaching with Brooke Kruger and hundreds of more lessons from leaders. If there’s one takeaway, give away your knowledge. Embrace open source as Lars Schmidt advises, and make it better for those around you.

💌 Challenge: Pay it forward by letting others learn from you. Post your learnings publicly.

3. ✨ Embrace Childhood Wonder as an Adult

Kindergarten might have taught us everything we really needed to know. In a world which feels quite dark at times, I’ve sought out the brightness, finding solace and inspiration in children's literature, cookies and pop culture comforts — Reading Rainbow’s passion for storytelling, Mary Poppins as your Chief Culture Officer, Sesame Street’s rules of kindness and Mister Rogers’ energy to work. These lessons are more relevant to work than I ever imagined when I was younger.

💌 Challenge: What childhood wonder inspires you today?

4. 🎩 Transform Ordinary Into Extraordinary

Reconsider opportunities presented to you and the ones you create yourself. That’s why I’m obsessed with The Herman Miller Picnic Poster story which Ryan Anderson taught me. It’s the story of how Steve Frykholm turned a basic poster project into a work of art, years later his art is on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

The Switchboard is an example. I assigned it to myself — a professional development project to interview leaders in my field. The more I talked to people, the more I realized I needed to share what I was learning and it’s evolved in so many unexpected and wonderful directions with best practices, awards and more.

💌 Challenge: What’s your Picnic Poster moment – let us know if it’s already happened! Or be on the lookout for it in the future.

5. ⚓ Anchor your Career and Life with Values

I added this question years into the newsletter because I’ve realized we all operate with a North Star — a guiding principle driving us personally and professionally. Claudia Bell’s connection and community, Jennifer Levine’s honesty, Carmen Boon’s transparency and assertiveness, Hillary U’s positivity, Jessica Kleiman’s honesty and kindness, Kristen Timms’ two wrongs don’t make a right and many more.

💌 Challenge: What value has shaped your career and life? Comment or reply.

Top 5 Best Practices Articles

These are the articles you’ve engaged with the most over the years:

1. 🖋️ Learn to Write for an Executive

2. 🎭10 Employee Club Ideas to Start with Zero Budget

3. 🌆 The Way We Wrap Up a Work Day Matters

4. ♟️Lead like a Chief Communications Officer

5. 😃📂 Create Your Smile File

Top 5 Most Shared Interviews

These are the interviews you’ve engaged with the most over the years:

1. 🎞️ Emily Singer Mandel

2. 🇯🇵 Blythe Yee

3. 💫 Brooke Kruger

4. 🧸 Kristen Timmins

5. 🛻 Hillary U

Thank you for being a loyal reader and champion of The Switchboard. This newsletter relies on word of mouth. So if you’ve smiled, learned or been inspired by something you’ve read, share it with a friend or colleague. And let me know. It means the world to hear from you. Here’s to many more adventures ahead together! Let me know what you’d like to discover together next in the poll below.

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