Top of the Month
At the beginning of every month, I engage in a practice I call “Top of the Month.”
This is a routine built over time, and in partnership, with my own executive coach Rachel Schankula of Kickass Coaching. Rachel and I worked together for nearly ten years as I held different executive leadership roles, and we even continued working together after I transitioned out of my last executive position.
We met weekly for one hour, and I considered those sixty minutes to be a special and sacred space that kept me steady and supported in my leadership, growth, and learning. In many ways, the invaluable experiences I had working with incredible coaches like Rachel inspired me to become a coach as well.
During our “Top of the Month” call, we would review the goals for the past month and set goals for the month ahead. While it sounds simple, I found the regular rhythm of engaging with this practice every single month generated new, and sometimes surprising, insights each and every time.
This practice produced incredible results in my ability to see, value, and celebrate my progress. So many times, I’d arrive to the Top of the Month review feeling like I had fallen short of all my goals, yet when I’d look back on what I 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 wrote down, I could see so much more progress than what I’d expected.
In the places where I missed my targets, I’d look for lessons and patterns to help me identify why. I would find roots of my resistance, shifts in priorities, or new needs that had emerged that I hadn’t anticipated. There was power in seeing these things more clearly.
One fun (and curious) observation–I would make progress on many goals even in cases where I kind of forgot about them or didn’t look back on them all month.
Over time, I also learned not to hold this practice with too much rigidity. For example, Top of the Month need not always be on the first of the month; it can be flexible when life and holidays require that.
This month, I plan to take Top of the Month a bit more slowly so I can really mine all the wisdom from August. It was a month that included many firsts, and I’m excited to share some of that learning in the posts to come.
