Growing with grace
Identifying growing and grace as my top two values helped me focus on who I want to be and how I want to show up. Revisiting these six years later, I am pleased that these ideas still ring true.
Growing with grace
Embracing a hopeful spirit with courage and gratitude
Douglass P. Teschner
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” — Anne Frank
Back in 2020, I wrote a column in this publication titled “Living Your Values at Work.” I referred to the final line in Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day”: “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I included Stephen Covey’s famous advice to “put first things first” and argued that the “first thing” is to clarify your core values.
“Your fundamental values and beliefs represent the core of who you are,” wrote James Kouzes and Barry Posner in their book “Learning Leadership.” In “Dare to Lead,” Brené Brown makes the case that value clarity, “is an essential support, a North Star in times of darkness.” Brown advocates for identifying your top two values and offers a list of 100 possibilities. For my top two, I picked growing and grace and also listed my secondary values: courage, authenticity, gratitude, faith, family, hope, connection, curiosity, love, leadership, joy, respect, vision, teamwork, trust and positive energy.
Growing is a key concept I emphasize in my leadership workshops — a willingness to always strive to improve and stretch oneself. Grace speaks to my religious experience and the importance of embracing kindness. Identifying growing and grace as my top two values helped me focus on who I want to be and how I want to show up. Revisiting these six years later, I am pleased that these ideas still ring true.
As I think ahead to 2027, I am contemplating how to best apply growing with grace as I focus my energy for new challenges. My leadership consulting business, while still active, has taken a back seat to writing the book “Beyond the Politics of Contempt: Practical Steps to Build Positive Relationships in Divided Times” and my volunteer work with Braver Angels. Braver Angels is leading a national movement to promote courageous citizenship and build together across political differences. While many are fearful about our nation’s future, we offer hopeful ways to better our lives, our relationships and our country.
The book was released in September 2025, and I was hoping to get more traction and publicity. For sure, 1,500 books sold and 1,400 subscribers to our “Together Across Differences” substack are not insignificant. Many people are really hungry to find a better way to navigate these trying times. But, despite extensive outreach, it has been challenging to get national attention and bring our message to a wider public. There is a relevant quote in the book: “If it screams, it streams, but if kind, pay no mind.”
Sometimes this feels discouraging, but I keep reminding myself to find hope, as well as seeking out others who demonstrate the same approach. After all, hope and despair are connected; it is possible to hold on to both at the same time.
So, I am thinking that a good growing-with-grace theme/vision statement is “to embrace a hopeful spirit with courage and gratitude, while sharing practical steps to better our lives, relationships, communities, and country.” But I am not sure yet where this goes when I get down to specifics. Do I want to write another book, or maybe find a different way to communicate these important ideas? I welcome reader suggestions, too!
I gave a talk at the Bristol, Maine, library and received a wonderful email afterward from director Jackie Bennett: “People were saying how hopeless/helpless we have been feeling. You left us feeling motivated and that we have a choice.” I need to keep holding on to that, recalling the Christopher Reeve quote: “Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.”
What about you? Where do you want to focus your energy in the next year? Consider the Gallup survey that identified hope and trust as the two most important qualities people seek in their leaders, followed by compassion and stability. We need to infuse our workplaces with a hopeful spirit.
In that 2020 column, I included this idea:
“The bottom line in life is the quality of relationships and connections with others:
how we touch and influence people and how they touch and influence us. The rest is just details.” We each have an extraordinary opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives, including our own. Don’t underestimate your impact!
Douglass P. Teschner, founder of Growing Leadership LLC, and author of “Beyond the Politics of Contempt: Practical Steps to Build Positive Relationships in Divided Times,” can be reached at dteschner@GrowingLeadershipLLC.com.
