The Importance of Accountability on Resilience and Recharge

share

Special thanks to guest bloggers, Iwona Dobler and Kira Connaughton, who wrote this blog post, about their personal experience on a Career ReCharge team.

Our group has been meeting for over six months. We always meet for lunch, which is great because we all need to eat lunch anyway. We start by talking about our families, then move into talking about Beth’s book, Career ReCharge: Five Strategies to Boost Resilience and Beat Burnout. We remember each other’s goals and ask follow-up questions from commitments at the previous meeting. We make a habit of recommending different resources to one another such as books, podcasts, apps, and websites. Often, one of us recommends a book and by the next meeting, another person has read or listened to it.

Pictured are: Iwona Dobler (left) and Kira Connaughton (center) with Beth Kennedy (right).

The topic where our group has spent the most time is probably well-being, mainly due to the amount of change and stress happening in our organization. When our group started meeting, the company had just acquired another large company so there was a lot of complexity and a lot to talk about. Because of the whirlwind at work due to the acquisition, it’s been good to take the time to focus on professional and personal growth. We help each other stay grounded and focused on our well-being and taking time for ourselves.

One thing that has worked well for our group is that we always reschedule the meeting; we do not cancel it. If someone has a conflict, we look for a new date as close in time as possible to the original. We also always make sure that all three of us are present for the meeting. In our most recent meeting, one of our group members joined us via phone from a business trip abroad. This keeps the forward momentum of the group’s discussion.

Another thing that has helped keep our group together is that we have a lot in common in our personal lives. All three of us have young sons (and only one child), so we have been able to offer each other advice on parenting. We also talk about neighborhoods and house hunting, since all of us have gone through periods of house hunting since the group has been meeting.

We use Career ReCharge as a reference, although we are not always done with the ‘assigned’ reading by the time of our meeting. The book helps us to frame our discussion and keep us on track. We plan to continue meeting at least until the end of the book. Who knows, maybe after that we will start a new book!

Scroll to Top