The holidays are a magical time to celebrate with friends and family and show our gratitude to all who are around us! It’s also a time to have a little bit of whimsical fun. At the Bermuda Clarity Institute, we love talking about our experiences, exercises and research that can help you seek “clarity” in your business but now, let’s add a holiday spin! Feel free to hum along with us!

On the 12 days of Clarity, the gifts we gave were these.

12. Leadership Levers

When you’re compliant, you do the bare minimum that is required. When you’re committed, you’re invested in both the endeavour and the expectation of lasting impact. This could mean committing to the ugliest sweater you can find for that upcoming party, as well as driving performance within your organisation to start the new year strong! The institute’s 12 levers work together to shift organisations towards positivity and improved performance.

11. Pipers Pitstopping

Whether you’re a Formula One driver, Santa travelling the world in one night, or a leader with responsibility driving a busy pace, you need to pause. With our pitstop programme, we bring companies briefly off their track to listen to and help their leadership teams “work on the company” instead working “in the company”. Eleven highlights and stories of impact from the pitstop experience can be found in our article in The Royal Gazette from November 22 2021.

10. Lords so Lucky

You might feel lucky when you manage to find the perfect Christmas gift for a loved one, but nothing beats a simple and powerful formula that you can follow. BCI Co-founder Stuart Lacey’s The Formula for Luck sets out 10 Powerful Principles for building a Luck Mindset. It’s all about a mindset change to change your life – during the holidays and always!

9. Ladies Leading

We all know that Ms Claus is the real reason Santa’s Workshop gets everything done on time and on budget. Our commitment is to diversity, equality and inclusive representation in gender, race, sexual orientation and identity. All of these are evidenced by BCI in the composition of our team, our board, our trustees and our share ownership. We are all stronger when we are inclusive.

8. Maids a Meditating

With the business and frenzy that the holidays bring, are you maintaining a mindset of gratitude and thankfulness? Mindfulness meditation is proven to enhance creativity by reducing cognitive rigidity and judgment. BCI’s Mindset Room is a quiet, calm, reflective space with yoga equipment, bolsters, and mats for meditation and a colourful mandala painting designed to allow the creative mind to run freely.

7. Swans Assessing

Do you struggle to think clearly in the chaos of today’s world, the stress of the holidays, and the many demands setting your organisation up for a strong end-of-year performance? Our Clarity Performance Index (CPI) is backed by over 20 years of data; focusing outcomes on the drivers of corporate performance – direction, operations, people and engagement. Using the CPI is an essential first step of your clarity process and identifying the positivity quotient within your organisation! Bonus gift in your Clarity stocking? It also determines your employee net promoter score!

6. Engaged Employees

In the hustle and bustle of the holiday, it’s easy to forget what the most important part is – people! People are our greatest asset. Our people develop our festive products, implement our jolly strategic plans and execute on our cheerful promises to customers. As leaders, please take a moment to learn how we drive engagement through meaning and progress – see our blog for more articles on engagement.

5. Golden Values

The holidays are filled with tales of small groups following a guiding star. Just as inspiring, is knowing exactly what your core values are and aligning them to your own north star. At Clarity, our 5 golden values are: curiosity (about ourselves and our work with you); intentionality (it’s in everything that we do); positivity (it transforms mindsets); collaboration (we are all in it together); and, creativity (our lab and our method). We work with all types of teams to help them identify and live their values and do so in service of measurable gains towards their north star.

4. Circuit Breakers

Although holidays are a joyous time, we also know the inherent challenges that come with balancing all that needs to get done. It can really drain the positivity from the season, can’t it? Circuit breakers is an exercise where we challenge individuals to identify what is inhibiting their natural positive flow of energy – and categorise them into the four quadrants of healthy, irritant, acute and overload. Once you can identify what is derailing you, you can aim to fix it. This builds bridges between teams, results in compassion, empathy and a better overall team culture.

3. Clocks a Ticking

Clocks are ticking in the countdown to Christmas, but the three clocks in the Institute create another dimension of time altogether! The numbers have been removed from the clocks and replaced with concepts for the leader to consider, process and prioritise. Reflect on time for self, time for others, and time for work – they come together so that you are on schedule for learning and growth as a leader.

2. Learning Labs

More incredible than the sound of hooves and sleigh bells on your roof, is the harmony of local and remote teams working perfectly in sync and in real time – in BOTH of our Learning Labs – the one here at BCI and our other sister lab exactly 2,919 miles away in Houston. Using cutting edge 4k video conferencing and studio quality sound systems – we can deliver fully hybridised workshops where the more than 30 team members in our Houston Lab can co-deliver, facilitate and support our live teams here and anywhere.

1. And, a mindset of Clarity!

At the Bermuda Clarity Institute, we strive to help organisations to achieve clarity through a positive mindset, a focus on connection, an intentional leadership structure, and more. Join us for an interactive experience, where every single designed element and every exercise creates a space to explore the potential of both individuals and organisations. Happy holidays and happy clarity!

Visit our Bermuda Clarity Institute in person to come and participate in our Circuit Breakers exercise. You can learn about upcoming workshops and our research here.

Excerpted from Leading Clarity: The Breakthrough Strategy to Unleash PEOPLE, PROFIT and PERFORMANCE (Wiley, April 3, 2018)