International Working Out Loud Week runs from 13-18 November 2017 and this weeks theme is ‘Deepen Relationships and Create a Legacy“.  So far this week we have looked at the value of deeper relationships, explored how Working Out Loud can Deepen relationships and explore how we can start to build a legacy today.

So far this week we have explored Working out loud can take your work and work interactions and make deeper relationships and legacy building a daily experience for you. Importantly working out loud can help you find, engage and win the support of those relationships that will be essential to your ongoing success and influence.

Enough talk. We can benefit from daily action. So let’s do more.

All good, but where do I start?

Here’s a step-by-step guide to gettting started today:

• Share your purpose: Share your legacy, your purpose or a goal. Share something you would like to achieve. Describe how you want to be a positive influence for others. Take your secret dreams and goals and put them out in the world with others. You don’t have to write an essay. You don’t have to put your goal on twitter. Just take one thing you want and share it with others, a WOL Circle is great but one person is enough to start. If you don’t have a goal or it’s not clear, ask a question of others about the influence you have.
• Share your work in progress: Take one little thing you are doing today and share it more widely for others to understand, learn from and to help.
• Make a contribution: Find someone else to help in a meaningful way. From a like to tangible assistance help one person move forward today.
• Ask for feedback and help: Explore the vulnerability of feedback and learning. Invite your trusted relationship partners to provide feedback. Invite others to help you solve an important challenge for your goal. You will be surprised by the power & insight of your networks and the depth of relationship created.
• Reflect together with others and share the lessons: Go for a coffee. Have a corridor conversation. Share a sandwich over lunch. Step out and discuss what you are learning as you work this week. Share what working out loud is teaching you and what you need to do more, better, different and less.
• Look for a way to grow the experiment: Do more tomorrow. Simple really. Start small. Learn. Grow and repeat.
• Step out of your comfort zone: Where is there a new relationship? What conversation might be tricky? Where might you have a lot at stake or a lot to learn? How might you be more vulnerable, generous or engaged?

If you are like me, your daily to do list probably makes all of the above a challenge. Set yourself the goal of doing one or two today and working your way up from there. Deeper relationships and our legacies are the outcome of consistent effort. Making the practice of working out loud second nature is a way to engrain the new habits that will deliver you deeper relationships and a much richer legacy.