Where has the year gone?
I hear it every year from clients, friends, and family as the holidays approach. For the first time in many years, I’m asking it, too. Where has 2026 gone?
There is a little loss tucked inside that question. Before I’ve given myself time to remember the year, I’m already considering what I didn’t accomplish. The intention I didn’t act on. The thing I thought I would have figured out by now. What might have been.
And almost immediately, I jump to what needs to happen in 2027. I’m struck by how quickly I make that move. I wonder where the time went, then hit fast-forward. Before this year has ended, I’m filling the next one with expectations—including some I haven’t stopped to reconsider.
Perhaps part of what makes a year feel so brief is how often we leave the present to prepare for what comes after it.
Recognizing what we almost overlooked
I don’t want to rush past what remains of 2026. I also don’t want the unfinished things to become the whole story I tell about it. As I give this year more attention, I’m finding accomplishments I knew about but hadn’t quite allowed myself to appreciate. There is work that once felt difficult and now feels familiar enough that I’ve stopped recognizing what it took to get here.
One discovery I nearly overlooked was beginning to understand how I do what I do. I hadn’t seriously considered that an accomplishment. It began with curiosity about my own contribution to the magic I was experiencing in my life and with my clients. What was I bringing to those experiences? How was I helping create what was happening?
As I stayed with that inquiry, something that had been foggy began to come into view. I could recognize more of what I had been doing without consciously knowing how. The work was familiar; my understanding of my part in it was changing. I was moving from unconscious competence to conscious competence.
That discovery changes what I can choose. When I can recognize my contribution, I can be more intentional about it. It also changes how I look back on this year. Some of what I accomplished was learning to see what I had previously taken for granted in myself.
Understanding what made our progress possible
I’m witnessing something similar with my clients. As we pause during our strategy conversations, there is surprise in recognizing what they accomplished in 2026. Looking back deserves more time than we initially give it. What happened? How did we make it happen? What did we learn about ourselves and our work together?
These questions help us recognize the choices we made, the commitments we honored, and what we are now able to do that we couldn’t do before. Our confidence grows as we understand what contributed to our success, and our choices about what to pull forward into 2027 become clearer.
Looking closely also gives us room to acknowledge what those accomplishments asked of us. Something may have succeeded because people stretched themselves in ways they cannot keep repeating. We can be proud of what we accomplished and still recognize that next year needs different conditions. If we move straight from what didn’t happen to what must happen next, we may ask more of ourselves without understanding what helped us succeed—or what we need to do differently.
I’m beginning to think that “Where has the year gone?” deserves an answer before it becomes another planning conversation. An answer with room for what happened, what it asked of us, and what we have yet to appreciate.
Some of what we hope to create in 2027 may already have been planted and watered this year. I’d like to spend a little more time here, noticing what is beginning to grow.
Writing and exploring deeper questions
This month, The Conversation Before the Conversation prompted comments and personal messages from readers who shared that it gave them a new perspective. I appreciate hearing that. Writing gives me a way to examine something closely; hearing from readers brings experiences and interpretations I couldn’t have reached on my own.
The essay explores the internal conversation we bring to an exchange before the other person speaks. As I reflect on this year, I’m becoming curious about the conversations we keep having after an experience has ended. What are we still trying to resolve? What have we decided it meant about us? How does that interpretation shape what we are willing to try next?
Endings are finding their way into my writing, too. We can know that something is over and still be in conversation with it. We revisit a choice, defend a decision, or imagine what we might say if given another opportunity. Perhaps there is something we need to understand. Perhaps we are asking the experience to give us an answer it cannot provide.
How do we recognize when reflection is helping us learn and when we are rehearsing a familiar account of what happened? What would allow us to bring something to a close without dismissing its importance or pretending we feel differently than we do?
That question about rehearsing a familiar account is also finding its way into November’s essay, When a Colleague Becomes the Obstacle. I’m exploring what happens when our view of someone becomes so familiar that we stop examining it. We anticipate their objections. We prepare for the difficulty we expect them to create. How much room remains for them to contribute something we haven’t considered?
I don’t want to resolve these questions too quickly. They are part of what draws me to writing: the opportunity to stay with something that has caught my attention long enough to discover why it matters.
Also this month
Across four client engagements, I’m witnessing teams beginning to gel. Some of this work began in late 2025; some has been underway since the beginning of this year. What is becoming possible now has been developing through conversations, choices, and commitments made over time.
This makes the recognition of my Forbes Coaches Council article, Four Practices That Turn Leadership Alignment Into Team Momentum, particularly meaningful. It was selected as an October Editor’s Choice, an honor I’m proud to share. I’m seeing how sustained attention to the practices I write about can change a team’s ability to move together.
That work also brings moments that leave me with questions. A session intended to focus on 2027 strategy became an annual planning and budget conversation. I’ve been considering that shift. What makes us so ready to begin planning when there is still so much to understand about the conditions in which those plans will need to work?
Market and economic conditions, the midterm elections and their potential policy implications, and developments within an industry all deserve more than acknowledgment. We need to consider what they might mean for this business. Where might our assumptions no longer hold? What are we seeing differently from one another? How might those differences help us understand what deserves our attention?
There is messiness in that conversation. The information doesn’t arrive with its implications neatly attached. People bring different experiences and interpretations. Something one person sees as an opportunity may raise a concern for someone else. We may need to reconsider a direction we felt confident about, without yet knowing what should replace it.
I wonder whether moving into annual planning offers some relief. We know how to discuss a budget, assign responsibility, and establish a deadline. We can leave with something decided. It can be harder to recognize the value of a conversation that unsettles our thinking before it helps us see more clearly.
Yet that is part of what I want us to make room for. Researching and understanding the conditions around us prepares us for a conversation; together, we still have to examine how that understanding should shape our choices. If we move too quickly into planning, we may build a detailed plan around assumptions we haven’t seriously questioned.
As a facilitator and team coach, I want to help teams resist the urge to settle on a plan before they have considered what the changing conditions might mean for their business. That includes giving differing perspectives enough attention to understand how they might change the decisions ahead. The plan matters. So does the quality of thinking that gives rise to it.
On the horizon
The first couple of weeks of November will bring me on-site with clients, working on possibilities that extend beyond the executive team and depend on its sponsorship, support, and guidance.
Part of the work is considering the invitation the executive team will extend to others. What are people being invited to help create? How might they understand their roles and responsibilities differently, both within their teams and in relationship to the executives?
There is often a desire for something different alongside familiar ways of working that continue to produce what people say they want to change. I want to help make that visible without turning it into another reason to find fault. Those ways of working developed for reasons. Understanding them gives us somewhere to begin.
The conversations ahead will ask us to examine how decisions are made, how people coordinate, what they understand they can act on, and where they continue to wait for permission. An invitation to contribute needs enough clarity and support for people to trust that they can respond.
This is part of how we intentionally reshape a culture. We attend to the conversations and agreements through which work happens, so people can understand how to help create the future they say they want.
November also brings the wedding of my daughter Courtney’s best friend, Megan, someone who has become very precious and dear to me. When she and Courtney lived together in Richmond after college, I often stayed with them while in town to meet with clients. Although I came for work, those stays gave me time with them that I will cherish forever.
At the “Hen House,” we had honest, heartfelt conversations about who we were, how we thought, and how the world and our lives were affecting us. I am thirty years older than these beautiful humans, and the discoveries and learning we shared have helped me better understand the next generation of leaders that I am privileged to work with. I trust I’ve helped them to appreciate what the Gen X crowd also has to offer. I continue to love being included in their lives and having room to share mine with them.
Those days hold some of my most cherished memories. It is an honor to be included now as we celebrate this next stage in her life.
Worth sharing
I’ve been captivated by Switzy by Emma Cline, and I highly recommend it. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize, it has also earned praise from Oprah Daily. The writing is exquisite. With every passage, I feel I am stepping into the character’s life as I examine my own.
What has held my attention is the experience of being so close to another person’s thoughts while still having to reconsider what I understand about him. David, a retired executive, is losing his ability to rely on his memory and make sense of his surroundings. As he travels toward Zurich, the past enters the present in ways he cannot always distinguish. We experience some of that uncertainty alongside him.
I find myself considering how different that is from encountering someone from the outside, where we can be quick to interpret a response or decide what a person needs. A reaction has a history. A moment that seems confusing to us may hold something familiar or deeply significant for the person experiencing it.
The book also gives me more to consider about endings and identity. What happens when the ways we have known ourselves become less available to us? How do we remain in a relationship with someone when our familiar ways of understanding them no longer seem sufficient?
That willingness to reconsider our understanding is something I’m also exploring in November’s essay, When a Colleague Becomes the Obstacle. In the ordinary difficulties of working together, when someone’s perspective makes our work more challenging, can we remain curious about what they see that we may be missing?
Life in the in between
This month, we met our new grandson, Cooper, and enjoyed time with his two-and-a-half-year-old brother, Bobby. Watching them at such different points in their lives was a joy. I was particularly moved by the room their parents, Shannon and Sam, gave Bobby to simply be with his brother.
He could spend time with Cooper and choose when he was ready to return to play—with us, on his own, or with his parents. My sense was that this freedom allowed his tenderness to come through. He didn’t have to remain beside his brother to please anyone or demonstrate how he felt. He could be himself.
I learned something watching that. Even with loving intentions, we can have an idea of what a moment should look like and begin asking others to fulfill it. Here, there was room for the moment to unfold. I found it beautiful to see what Bobby brought to it when he could choose.
We are also officially moved into our new home. Everything is unpacked and in place, and I feel able to relax into the space. Unpacking has brought its own discoveries. Familiar things invite fresh consideration when we choose where they will live. What do I want close by? What deserves a place where I will see it? What have I kept without giving it much attention?
Placement says something about importance. I’m noticing how the things we make room for can become more present in our lives, even when we have had them for years.
An invitation for November
November holds more room to breathe, time with family, and gratitude for the life I’m living. I’d like to give that gratitude some attention beyond the feeling itself, and I invite you to join me.
Three days a week, set aside ten minutes to give something already in your life a second look. Choose your days and a time you can realistically honor. Put them on your calendar, with an end date of November 30th.
For one of those pauses, bring your attention to a person. For another, notice something in your ordinary surroundings. For the third, return to an experience or effort from this year that you haven’t fully appreciated.
Take a photograph, make a small sketch, or write a few lines—whichever helps you stay with what you notice. Give it enough detail that you could return to it later and remember why it mattered. “I’m grateful for my family” becomes something more particular when we recall what someone did, what we saw in them, or how it felt to be together.
The condition of satisfaction is that you gave something your attention and kept a small record of what you noticed. You don’t need to produce an insight.
Then, together, let’s see what happens. At the end of the month, return to what you collected. Notice what is available to you that you weren’t seeing before, and whether it changes how you want to enter December.
A question I’m carrying forward
Where might my expectations be leaving too little room for something I would love to discover?
I’m considering this in my work, in my relationships, and in the way I approach the coming year. Watching Bobby with Cooper gave me an experience to return to: There was tenderness I could appreciate without needing to direct it. I wonder where else I might allow that kind of room.
Explore my website to learn more about the work I do with leaders, businesses, and organizations. I’d love to connect and start a conversation about how we might work together.
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