We were lucky to catch up with Megan Brogger recently and have shared our conversation below.
Megan, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
As a business owner and leadership development coach and consultant , I often find myself considering and/or discussing purpose. mission, or “why”. So this question stood out to me because it got me thinking – I didn’t just find my purpose, I continue to find my purpose – again and again.
But let’s start at the beginning. I am trained as a Counseling Psychologist and originally worked with children. adolescents, and families. So, a lot of what I was working with were different kinds of systems and dynamics – siblings, kids to parents, parent to parents, and even larger family challenges. One variable in a family’s dynamic that came up again and again was the extent to which a parent’s work (schedule, role, stress, etc.) impacted them as an individual and their family by extension.
So, toward the end of my graduate training I shifted my focus to business psychology and transitioned my background in psychology and systems to helping individuals, teams, and organizations understand people dynamics in the workplace. This was really the first time when I felt the, “Yes – this fits! This is what I was meant to do.” I recognized the impact that raising awareness of an individual’s strengths and opportunities, creating understanding about how people impact and influence each other at work (intentionally and unintentionally), and how each of us have a role to play in creating workplace environments that are psychologically safe had on the people in our training and coaching programs, but those around them, too.
That was the first time I really felt like I found my purpose and it’s largely stayed the same. But it’s a question I ask myself and Lumin’s leadership team at least annually. Sometimes we discover it’s shifted a bit. Like during the pandemic, our purpose shifted to helping individuals and leaders stay effective, connected, and productive in remote work situations. And as we slowly transition out of the pandemic, our purpose is developing authentic leaders, engaged teams, and inspired employees who are able to understand the changes to our workplace dynamics as a result of the pandemic and lead us into the future of work – one that is flexible, accountable, and kind.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
The Lumin Group’s main goal is to strengthen organizations by developing their most valuable resource – people. Our world of work is changing and so are our workplace ecosystems. Employees are influenced and impacted by everyone around them – one action, one interaction, and one day at a time. That’s why we inspire leadership at every level.
Lumin offers:
– COACHING: Using the power of one-on-one or group coaching to inspire change
– WORKSHOPS & RETREATS: Training experiences that help reconnect, recharge, or refocus
– LEADERSHIP ACADEMIES: Developing leaders at all levels to engage teams and inspire employees
We are working on some exciting changes for 2024 including an expansion of our in person and virtual training & facilitation offerings, a rebrand, a new website launch, and more!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
The three qualities most impactful on my journey? Courage, Curiosity, and Commitment.
Starting a business – and staying in business – takes all three, but it began with courage. Courage to take the leap, trusting that I and the team could navigate whatever came our way. And we did!
Being will to ask questions and then asking good questions takes curiosity. I’ve found that cultivating curiosity helps me to stay open to new ideas, changes, and unexpected opportunities. Curiosity also drives my love of learning and makes it easy for me to say when I don’t know something and then ask for help so I can figure it out.
And finally, commitment. Being commited to my business doesn’t mean working all the time. Rather, it means prioritizing, setting clear goals for success, and ensuring that we factor in our own needs in that picture of success. Lumin is thriving not only because we stay on top of the trends, needs, and challenges of our clients and work to bring scientifically-backed strategies to those, but also because we “practice what we preach” internally. We are committed to maintaining a psychologically safe work environment for our team, offer unlimited PTO (i.e., understand the client and business needs, communicate your own needs with the Lumin team, and then take as much time as you can/need whenever you can/need), and encourage growth and autonomy.
So how do you develop these?
Courage is a bit tricky, isn’t it? We all have stories we tell ourselves from past experiences and if those stories include themes of self-doubt, it can be difficult to overcome. I think my courage developed over time from a strong educational background, great training experiences with supportive supervisors, and having excellent mentors along the way.
Curiosity is a bit easier. One simple thing to do to cultivate curiosity is to challenge yourself to ask a question before making a judgment. So a reflex response of “That’s not right.” might become, “I wonder how they came up with that?”
Commitment probably seems easy when the core of what you’re doing is something you’re passionate about. If you have that, then navigating all the other things that come with bringing that mission to life become become a little less difficult. Do I love invoicing, budgeting, and reviewing our platform subscriptions? Not really. But do I understand that learning those things and doing them in service to the mission of our business is important? Absolutely. So, connecting with your mission/purpose/why is a great way to build that commitment/determination muscle.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
This is a really powerful question because I think the answers lie both in understanding what leads to a person feeling overwhelmed, how quickly they “catch” those feelings, and then what they can do to manage or address the feelings – both in the moment and longer term.
So I guess my first piece of advice would be to get curious about what leads to you feeling overwhelmed. We have participants in some of our leadership development programs do an audit for a couple of weeks to monitor their nervous system. I’m oversimplifying the exercise here, but essentially we ask them to check in with themself several times a day to see how they’re feeling (i.e., how activated/overwhelmed they are on a scale of 1-5), what’s going on, and what, if anything, they did to either try to stay where they were at or re-regulate themself. What they often discover are some specific things that help them feel regulated and some specific triggers for dysregulation/overwhelm, etc.
Once you begin to pay attention to this, you can actually become more aware of when your system starts to shift from baseline to overwhelmed or activated, which is great because we have a much better chance of catching and addressing it before we get too overwhelmed and shift into survival mode. So once we become more aware, there’s opportunity to consider what “in the moment” and maintenance strategies may help. An example of an “in the moment” strategy I use is to slow down so I can speed up. When I’m overwhelmed, I get this feeling like I need to rush, my self talk is “just keep going”, and I just try to do the next thing on the list, etc. But the problem is that I become far less effective when I’m rushing through things and lose my ability to prioritize and think strategically. So, I’ve learned to use that feeling of rushing as a sign to actually do the opposite – slow down. I set a timer for 10 minutes (or longer if I can) and either take a quick walk, play some frisbee with my dogs, meditate, or listen to a couple songs that slow me down. Then, the first thing I do when I re-engage is write down the to-do list swirling in my head and then ask myself, in what order they actually need to be done and whether I am the one that needs to do it or if it’s something I can delegate. Things brings order and clarity and helps me jump back in with the kind of focus and dedication I pride myself on bringing to my work.
Those “in the moment” strategies can be super powerful and I also try to manage – or really prevent – feeling overwhelmed by using more of the maintenance strategies. These are things like establishing and keeping to a (flexible) routine, ensuring quality sleep, adjusting my schedule to bring more balance to my work and life times, and getting a walk in the woods with my dogs every day – without my phone/airpods/distraction!
And with all that being said…it’s a continuous process. Awareness, intentionality, routine. Some days and weeks are better than others, but I continue to strive for wellness and balance so I can be the best version of myself for my family, co-workers, and clients.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thelumingroup.org
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganbrogger/
- Other: Note: We are rebranding and the website link above will be live the 6th of February!
Image Credits
Tammy Brice Photography
