CHAPTER 4

Desire, Intention, Impact. Clarify It.

We create our experience in every moment; contract or expand, repel or invite, fear or love, abdicate or lead . . . We choose.

Once you’ve claimed your contagiousness (Chapter 1); have awareness of your current reality, strengths, and blind spots (Chapter 2); truly own your power to create more credibility and success and are clearer on your wants and desires (Chapter 3)—you’re in the driver’s seat! You are well on your way to creating more impact (and saving a ton of time, energy, and drama in doing so). This chapter is devoted to creating intention and opening the “Portal of Purpose” so you can unlock the next level of your ability to lead, influence, and create the impact you want. In Part 2 of this book, I’ll give you tools to work from the inside out so that you are set up for sustainable and pleasurable success. And for now, let’s open the portal.

I often have people come into our two-day sessions ready to quit their jobs, ask for a divorce, or make some kind of major radical life change—decisions coming from a place of scarcity, frustration, and fear—only to find they have way more power and options than they realized, and more solutions than they could have imagined. They go home and re-engage in their roles and with their teams more effectively. Some redesign their relationships or marriages (if only internally with themselves in how they commit to showing up), some change their jobs and business models, some change their lives completely, and many decide against other choices they’d been making from the wrong place before they got still and explored their own leadership, presence, and contributions first.

How do people get to the state they are at coming into day one in the first place? Often it’s just because they’re busy. They’ve gotten sucked into the swirl and are not in touch with what we’ve spoken about so far in this book. They’re often running so fast and pulled in so many directions that they’ve lost sight of their desires, intentions, and the impact they truly want to have. This is all shiftable, quickly. But you have to make a minute for it.

Creating an Experience and Designing Impact

”What is the experience you want to create with this client and for yourselves? What is the ultimate impact you want to have? And what specific outcomes would you like to walk out of that meeting with this afternoon?”

After a morning talking about intention, energy, presence, and impact, a team I’d been working with walked out of the meeting space we were in into another space with a client and closed a seven-figure deal. In an hour.

The team texted me after to let me know the outcome, “We got the business! Going for drinks!”

And that was that.

It wasn’t until the next day I realized how far off the team members had been from closing that deal until we debriefed what’d happened.

Going into that meeting they knew they wanted the business and they knew they could help the client. They’d had several preliminary meetings and run a couple of experiments. They felt they could do it.

What they didn’t know was that they were not aligned in their beliefs about the client (or each other), their intentions for the meeting, or the specific outcomes desired. More so, they were not conscious about the experience they wanted to create or the energy they’d need to bring into the room to close the deal.

Before our session, they were not fully aligned on an “energetic intention” level. After we’d met, they were.

We’d done nothing fancy except go through one of the IEP Method frameworks you’re about to learn. They gave themselves the space to be honest within that framework and to take a pause as a team. That was it. It had taken a little less than two hours to cut through the muck and get clear about their desires, what they were going to do, and who they were going to be in that room. (This process would have taken less time if there’d been more alignment to begin with.) A couple of hours of energetic hygiene and spending time determining a desired impact is worth seven figures, peace within the team, and a client’s increased confidence, don’t you think?

The lead on the team offered me this: “Anese, I’m not sure if we would have gotten the business or not. I’d like to think so; we’d done some solid prep for it. My sense is, though, that we would have struggled through some critical points, and even if we got it, left the client not as confident. As you saw, we were definitely not jiving as a team—and even scarier, didn’t realize how far off we actually were with each other. At best it would have been more effort to close, and for sure not as pleasurable of an experience. Getting clear on our intended impact, our beliefs, our lack of alignment, and how we each needed to show up in that room—and as a team—before we headed in yesterday was essential. I think the project will be better for it too—in fact, the more I sit with this, the more excited I am about all of it and what we’ll create.”

And then my client asked the magic question, “How do we make this process part of normal business practices, and in the rest of our lives?” And then, in a lower tone, “And how do I use this with my wife?”

The answer I give to his questions, or to anyone asking about how to integrate this work into the rest of their lives? Just use it. Apply it. Get intentional about your desired impact and experience, decide to make it so, and go!

Parenting with Intention and Grace

My girlfriend had an intense conversation she needed to have with her teenage daughter about sex and drugs and a fib she’d caught her in. She was fired up. Angry. Hurt. Scared. And nervous about the conversation. She didn’t want to “mess” this up. It was tender, vital, and an important “moment.”

She called me.

“I know I’m not in the right space to have this conversation, but it needs to be had. Like yesterday. Can you help me get my head and heart straight?”

Absolutely.

We went through the IEP Method five-step process of creating impact and choosing an experience, stopping where we needed to stop to work through things. At the end of our call, she was ready to go into that conversation present, loving, strong, and clear.

The conversation (worth, in my mind, more than that seven-figure deal) was a success.

What’s the price you’d put on building a stronger bridge and giving your teenage daughter a safe space to step into so she might avoid drugs and you might avoid being a grandparent earlier than you’d like?

The entry point into both of these conversations and the results that followed were a blend of the questions, “What is the experience you want to create?” and “What is your intention?”

Clarifying Desires, Intentions, and Impact

Every time I speak, lead a session, facilitate a group, have a conversation with a client, do business development, talk high stakes with my kids, or start a new project, I am putting myself in the frameworks I share here. I’ve found these useful even if the only person engaging in that experience is me (e.g., doing paperwork or other tedious tasks). I still get to choose my intended impact and how I want to feel. Some circumstances and engagements need a full workup (working the IEP Sheet I’ll share later), some need to be jotted down on a Post-it, and some just need to be thought through and intended well.

I have clients who, on every plane ride, go through their five steps for all meetings on the other side. I have colleagues who keep a pad of Post-its or IEP Sheets handy, to use as needed. Some people give themselves five minutes between meetings to run their steps. Some just quickly review them first thing in the morning. Some don’t use the framework at all, and instead find that just knowing that their presence has impact and that they can be intentional in creating their experience is plenty enough to up-level their game.

You’ll find what’s true for you.

Does it always work perfectly? No. Are there things absolutely out of our control? Yes, most everything. Stuff happens, life hurts, and impact fails. And we have the choice of what we do with it, how we respond, how intentional we are to begin with, how we talk to ourselves throughout, how we get support, and how we lead ourselves and those we care about amid the mess. It’s up to you. Having frameworks, reminders, and guardrails can be helpful “bread crumbs” back to “pulling it together” when everything feels like it’s falling apart. Because if you are living a full, rich, risky life, and you are growing—it will. Often!

The Five Steps of Creating Intentional Impact

So what are these five steps?

In Part 2, I’ll share the formal IEP Method with you. (If you’ve been doing the work throughout the book so far, you’ve already started practicing it.) This 5-Step Framework is a core component of the methodology. In Contagious Culture (Chapter 5) I shared the five steps in deeper detail, from a different perspective, and with several examples and fieldwork. Here, I’m sharing them early so you can start now. The framework supports crafting intentional impact, in its simplest form, to create tangible and intangible results in any conversation, project, relationship, or experience.

First, identify the project or discussion you’re focused on and why it’s important. Note that the following exercise pairs beautifully with the frameworks in Chapter 3; the “Want It/Love It Up” exercise helps you identify what you want, and the “Do the Work” exercise helps determine what you need to do to actually create it. The following 5-Step Framework helps us bring it all together to activate intentions and create the impact we desire.

The Five Steps to Intentional Impact Framework

•   Outcome. What is the outcome you want to create? This should be tangible and something you can see or touch. You would not have created this outcome without the meeting, conversation, project, and so on.

•   Impact. What is the emotional impact you want to have? How do you want people to feel? How do you want to feel? You will create an emotional and energetic experience with your presence and actions either way. Being intentional about it is highly useful.

•   Show up. How will you have to show up to create the outcome(s) and emotional impact you desire? What will your presence be? Your quality of listening? Your body language? Your attire? Anything that impacts how you show up goes here.

•   Believe. What will you want and need to believe in order to show up that way? Make this authentic. If you’re having a hard time finding something useful and real to believe, go deeper. What’s the truest thing you can believe to help you show up well and congruent?

•   Actions. What actions will you need to take to make it all so? What will you actually have to do? Before, during, after?

You will find that magic happens when you are clear on what you want, have a strong why, put these five steps together, and do the work. You need all five steps. Don’t skip or take any of them for granted. I’ve done the legwork, I promise. Every single step is here on purpose. I have countless stories of people redesigning relationships, closing business deals, getting their dream job, changing the energy and effectiveness of their meetings, calling in their spouse/partner, exiting an employee with grace and dignity, completing their marriage, having hard conversations, going through mediation, and on and on using the five steps.

Plug yourself into this framework for your next meeting and see what happens. For fun, as a team, you could even plug the question “What kind of contagious do we want to be?” into the five steps.

When you lay these steps on top of the work we’ll be doing throughout the rest of this book, they only become richer.

They can be used for a singular event, but they can also be used in the vision of your life and the overall impact you want to have in business, parenting, relationships, legacy . . . all of it.

Here’s something extra special about these five steps—when you use them regularly, they become a habit. They begin to frame thinking, unlock new ways of navigating leadership challenges, and help crystallize themes of what is most important to you. These steps strengthen your intention and make it real, which is core to opening the Portal of Purpose for even more powerful and exuberant impact.

The Portal of Purpose and the Power of Intention and Proclamation

The intentions we set create a portal for our reality.

For years I’ve worked my vision for impact with a full heart. I use my five steps regularly, and I work my Intentional Energetic Presence (IEP) daily. I’ve had some thrilling wins, and I’ve also been brought to my knees. What’s helped me keep going has been connection to purpose and to my Essential You (more in Part 2). What’s also kept things moving is my clarity of intention, my commitment to service, my true presence, my openness to magic, and my willingness to claim it. These together, combined with the factors that support them (that I’m sharing in this book), open what I call the “Portal of Purpose.”

The combination is potent.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. I’d just spent an entire day at a client’s winery in Napa leading 60 of the client’s front-line staff through our IEP Fundamentals session. We’d had a ball, and my car was stocked with good wine. Coming out of the session, I noticed a stream of texts from my manager. I called her back. “Anese,” she said, “there’s a big conference in education, 600 superintendents representing the State of California and about 4.2 million students in K–12. They have a keynote early Thursday morning in Monterey, 36 hours from now. Their keynoter got sick and they want to know if you can step in. You have literally 15 things on your calendar that we’ll need to move, including a ‘hot date’ tomorrow night, it’s your week with the kids, and the dog is going to need boarding. What do you think?”

My task brain said, “Um . . . hell no.”

But my heart, spirit, and mouth said, “Hell yes!” before my task brain could take over.

“Tell them yes! We’ll figure it out.” This was one I definitely wanted to show up for.

Not even 36 hours later I was on stage with some of the biggest decision makers and influencers in education in California, having a chat about showing up for leadership, creating a contagious and courageous culture, and working their own IEP.

After the session one of the superintendents, Dr. Greg Franklin of Tustin Unified School District, asked me to sit down with him in the lobby. He asked me, “How do we get this work into our schools?” Within an hour of the keynote, we’d decided to have me down for another keynote in Southern California in a few months. We’d also decided to do a prototype of our IEP Stewardship Program with eight of his teachers and principals representing 24,000 students. The conversation was easy. It was present, meaningful, and real. Greg and I were aligned—the energy of positive intent, intuition, and “heck yes” for both of us was very much alive. I drove home on four tires and magic air.

Within ten weeks the new stewards were trained. Within seven months I was on stage at the district’s annual school-year kick-off to speak with more than 1,100 teachers, principals, and others, and then spent the next day witnessing the stewards from the back of their classrooms, as they brought this work to life at the different schools. Within eight months, from “Hello, let’s train,” to launch, they’d led 1,700 of their fellow teachers, principals, and administrative personnel through the IEP Fundamentals. As I write this, they are still going strong, doing magic with the content in a way that fits for education, and exploring ways to touch the rest of the humans in the district next year.

That’s less than eight months for some important contagious impact that’s just getting started. Eight months may feel like a little or a lot to you. Trust me: what these folks did in that amount of time is profound. It took some major IEP on all our parts. Because let me tell you, while this story is great, the serendipity of what led up to it is a powerful demonstration of the magic of intention and the Portal of Purpose.

Now . . . here’s where it gets extra interesting.

The conference center where I delivered that keynote in Monterey for education was the exact conference center and room and location where I’d spoken as the keynote the previous week for a conference in real estate. As part of that talk, the conference leaders had asked me to stay after and be on a Women in Leadership panel. During the panel one of the audience members asked me where I’d like to see this work go. My response? “Everywhere. However, I believe that education and health care are two of the most important industries we can get this work into in order to create a greater, more authentic, and positively leverageable impact on our planet.”

I remember the question. I remember the conviction I had while answering it (clarity of intention). And I remember feeling my heart and what felt like goosebumps all over as I sat on that stage and claimed this desire in front of 200+ people (powerful proclamation). Looking back, I can see now that the feeling I had was of absolute truth for me, a grounding in my purpose (commitment to service). The combination of that statement, my internal congruency, and my IEP (true presence) was liken to writing a letter to the universe or casting some kind of spell or saying a deep, deep prayer or something else simply powerful and magical (openness to magic). In any case, my “request” was heard. And a week later I was in that same conference room, in that same center, on that same stage, speaking to the audience (of three times the size) I’d claimed the week before (exuberant impact) (see Figure 4.1).

FIGURE 4.1   The Portal of Purpose

This is not an uncommon occurrence. The universe conspires to support us when we are present, clear on our desires, aligned with ourselves, on purpose with our mission, and in service of others. I’ve witnessed (and experienced) many other stories like this where an intention is set, a proclamation is made, the purpose is strong, and magic unfolds. Stories of serendipitous meetings; people attracting the right business partners, employees, agents, clients, or spouses; colleagues landing serendipitous speaking gigs and book deals; even money or clients “showing up” at the perfect time—all accessed in the Portal of Purpose.

While the portal opens up, things will also clear out. Anything that isn’t in service of the greatest good, your soul, your mission, your truth, or your well-being goes “buh-bye.” I’ve noticed that when I’m truly on purpose and clear, anything that isn’t in alignment or is dramatic, not truthful, or not serving my energy makes itself painfully obvious that it needs to go. Sometimes this magically takes care of itself, and other times it requires hard and sometimes “trudgerous” but necessary worthwhile work.

Why, oh why, does this all happen? Because when you’re in the “portal,” it has to. The portal opens up when your IEP is clear, when you listen, when you’re in service of, when you come from love, when you honor your intuition, and when you’re willing to say “yes” to really scary stuff because your soul demands it. The portal opens up when you’re willing to be on your edge and to devote to service and creating an impact that is bigger than you.

I believe the portal can only be accessed if we are taking excellent care of ourselves, owning our impact, holding the intention of service, and listening. Add in magic, proclamations, and true presence (which requires great IEP)—the possibilities are limitless.

The more I pay attention to the portal in my life, the more I can feel solid yeses or nos. I can feel opportunities open and get stronger and wider as I stay in flow. And I notice that when I question the portal, when I second-guess any decision that comes from overthinking, when I get small or try to force something that doesn’t feel right—I contract and the portal gets smaller or shuts down all together.

That is the power of intention, of listening, of working our IEP, and of staying true.

It’s also the power of saying yes.

Be open to the portal. Say yes. And lead.

Ready? Let’s put it together.

Fieldwork: Make It Real

Let’s open the Portal of Purpose and create some intentional impact. This can be in any area of your life or overall, it can be for this book (though you likely already did this in Chapter 2), and it can be for any timeline (today, this week, a year, etc.). Do this for as many situations and areas of life you wish.

These two exercises can work together or hold their own separately. I personally like to do the Portal of Purpose for overall “big mission” impact, and then use the Five Steps to support everything I do in the portal.

The Portal of Purpose Exercise

My intention (what I want to make happen): _________________

My commitment to service and purpose (why this is important): _________________

My proclamation (what I am naming and claiming I want to create here, and whom I’m proclaiming it to): _________________

My level of openness to magic (trust, faith, serendipity, pixie dust, and the unexplainable): _________________

My level of true presence (my breath, presence, self-care, congruency, and being here connected now): _________________

Anything I need to do or be to make each of these components even stronger: _________________

The Five Steps to Intentional Impact Exercise

Project/conversation/meeting/situation: _________________

Why important/What’s at stake/Who it impacts: _________________

1.   Desired outcomes: _________________

2.   Desired emotional impact: _________________

3.   How I will show up: _________________

4.   What I will believe: _________________

5.   What I will do: _________________

With Part 1 of this book digested and applied, the contagious you is now ready to move to Part 2. There we’ll work on building your even more positively contagious and healthy presence.