Friday Forward - Year's End (#516)
The Friday Forwards that resonated most this year tied to values and principles
Each December, I review the past year’s Friday Forwards, and the replies, to get a sense of the messages that resonated most. Perhaps because of the launch of The Compass Within, this year’s most popular posts related to issues of principles and values.
Since COVID, it’s been hard to feel anything resembling normal, especially as black swan events—rare, unpredictable shocks with outsized impact—seem to occur far more often than they used to. As a result, leaders face more pressure than ever, dealing with disruptions from AI, market changes, an ongoing employee engagement crisis, and more.
In a world where so much feels out of control, the antidote is to focus on what we can influence and to understand what we value. When our priorities, leadership, and communication align with those principles, they hold up over time. Here are some reminders of how to get that alignment.
Your Time (#465): The very first Friday Forward of the year tackled an essential topic: making sure your schedule reflects your priorities. If your daily calendar isn’t aligned to your values, you will find yourself with a lot of misspent time. Read The Post
Say & Do (#474): This year I helped several leadership teams identify their organizational core values. During this work, I had a realization: pretty much all cultural problems at a company are rooted in the gap between what leaders say matters and what behaviors they permit or enable. Read The Post
Standing Ground (#488): Occasionally, a single challenge affects an entire industry, and company leaders see their values and abilities tested. Such a challenge hit the legal field this year, with several top law firms facing intense pressure from the current US government. How these firm leaders responded offers a crucial lesson about the importance of standing by your core values. Read The Post
Super Villain (#504): In helping thousands of leaders discover their personal core values, I have identified a key tool. Often, the best way to identify a non-negotiable principle is to think about the character traits or behaviors we simply cannot tolerate. This post discusses this Anti-Value Test and how it can help you get clarity on what matters most to you. Read The Post
I also wanted to re-share four of the top Elevate Podcasts episodes from the year:
Charles Duhigg, NYT Bestselling Author of The Power of Habit and Supercommunicators.
Olga Khazan, journalist for The Atlantic and author of Me, But Better.
Henry Abbott, founder of TrueHoop, former ESPN leader and author of Ballistic.
David Gelles, author of Dirtbag Billionaire and award-winning business journalist.
Thank you for being part of this community in 2025, and Happy New Year!
Quote of The Week
“Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress.” – Charles Kettering
Have a great weekend!
-Bob
robertglazer.com
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Insightful. It makes me wonder, how can leaders maintain this value aligment when AI is changing everything so fast? Always so much to reflect on here.
Happy 2026, Bob. I must take exception to your statement that we are experiencing more "black swan" events, or put another way, less "normalcy" today. IMHO, humans display a recency bias, meaning things today are always THE WORST ever. Yes, our ability to communicate is far different now, with a 24-hour news cycle. That alone makes everything seem worse. The nightly news uses that fear as clickbait, and the language they use to describe news is more exaggerated than ever(listen closely to the language when they run teasers at the beginning of a newscast)--to get your attention. I assure you--in the past, people faced just as many challenges, with few/no supports to help them. Think about the years 1929-41, globally.