Power Archive

Strengths at the Scene

When we archive we don’t just archive events but we also archive ourselves in the event. That is where we can find the leverage. Looking back at a decision, you should not only be asking what happened but also you should be noticing which part of you showed up and how that helped or hindered a favorable outcome.

Earlier in my career I have been influenced by two models that has helped me a lot in different ways. Here I will make an effort to combine them into something useful for you, it’s a compact blend of the military After Action Review discipline with the VIA character strengths lens so your archive captures both mechanisms and displayed strengths in the same frame to create your own Power Archive.

The thought model: Strengths-First AAR

Run a micro-AAR right after a consequential moment by writing down three short lines:

• Mission snapshot: what we intended to achieve.

• What happened (facts): the key sequence and first signal.

• Strengths in action: which strengths actually drove your behavior—Judgment, Prudence, Courage, Kindness, Teamwork, Self-Regulation—and whether any were overplayed or missing.

Close the micro-AAR with one mechanism you discovered that affected the outcome, a cause, not a story. Then make one pre-commitment for next time in the form of an observable action and which strength to dial up or down to get a more favorable outcome. This turns the archive into foresight because you are not just noting outcomes but instead you are instrumenting how you lead under pressure. This is Sankofa (see the week 5 article published this Tuesday), you look back and bring the egg with you into the future, the egg representing your learning and adjustment of your behavior through making the pre-commitment.

Below we will look at this through the VIA character strengths lens, there is also a downloadable template for the micro-AAR and a deployment experiment for you to try next week.

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