The Path To Leadership
Leadership isn’t a destination—it’s a journey. On The Path to Leadership, Dr. Katie Ervin brings her research, real-world experience, and signature no-fluff style to help you grow into the leader you want to be. Each episode offers practical tips, powerful tools, and authentic conversations with leaders from all walks of life.
Whether you’re managing a team, building a culture, or stepping into your first leadership role, this podcast is your guide to leading with purpose, clarity, and confidence.
Because leadership isn’t about titles—it’s about impact.
The Path To Leadership
Quarter Four as the Bridge to Quarter One: Momentum, Boundaries, and Better Leadership
The way we finish the year decides how we start the next. Instead of coasting through December and losing a month of momentum, we walk through a clear, practical strategy for treating quarter four as the bridge to a stronger quarter one. We share the leadership moves that matter most right now: set a focused rallying cry, narrow your must-do list, celebrate wins early and often, and support your team with real flexibility and thoughtful boundaries through the holidays.
We dig into the nuts and bolts of planning early—running retreats in October, reviewing data and lessons learned, and locking Q1 priorities and owners before calendars flip. You’ll hear why clarity beats busyness, how to avoid the mid-December to mid-January stall, and what it looks like to communicate priorities so people return in January ready to execute. We explore recognition as a performance tool, mental health check-ins as a leadership habit, and the role of intentional scheduling to protect energy without sacrificing results.
On the personal side, we talk boundaries, energy management, and reflection: sleep, movement, and nutrition that keep leaders steady under stress; saying no to make room for deep work and real rest; and deciding which “priorities” to finally release. You’ll leave with simple homework that shifts focus from tasks to impact, helps you recognize the right people at the right time, and plants at least one seed of Q1 momentum before the year ends. If this conversation sparks an idea or gives you a useful tool, share it with a colleague, hit follow, and leave a quick review—then tell us: what’s your rallying cry for Q4?
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Welcome back to the Path to Leadership. I'm so excited to have you back this week. And I love this topic because I've been spending a lot of time lately with my clients and with prospective clients talking about the end of the year plans. They, whether it be planning a retreat, whether it be, you know, how they are scheduling things towards the end of the year, there's just so much going on. And so I thought this was such a good topic. I love the energy around quarter four. It's really that sprint to the finish line. It sets us up for next year. We have so much going on. So it creates these challenges, but it's also one of the things that we have to realize it's so critically important. It matters so much, both personally and professionally. And so this episode is really this quick roadmap of, you know, how do we really go hard into quarter four and then also set ourselves up for successful to kick off quarter one of 2026? And that's really important because we kind of have to flip our lens on quarter four. We see quarter four so much about how do we finish strong? How do we close out the year? How do we get to the end of the year? But we've also got to really be focused on creating momentum for quarter one. We got to make sure that we're really setting ourselves up for a really strong start. And I think that's not always the case. A lot of times we will see people coasting to the end of the year. We've just been so busy, we've been doing so much. And so it's the time where people are taking holidays. It's the time where people are slowing down. And that's great. But so many people know I love golf. And if you think about quarter four as your last three to four holes on the course, like you can have a strong start in golf. You can be doing great in baseball. You could have a strong start to the game. The, you know, in football, the strong, you're you're going good. But if you fall apart in the last couple holes, or in the last couple innings, or in the last, you know, quarter of the game, it's going to impact your score. You can't just coast, and that's so important. The decisions we make now influence our culture, our motivation, retention. It goes so much into the year. So, well, I love that companies really pay attention to work-life balance, which I know is a joke. It's really that work-life harmony, and really respectful for people, you know, as they're taking time off of family stuff. And I get that, but we can't just stop business. And so many companies that I've seen will essentially they slow to almost a stop on December 15th and not really get the momentum back until January 15th. And so we're missing a month of the year or yeah, a whole month of the year. We're we're really missing out. And so we really need to think about this. So here's some tips that I want you to think about as a leader in your organization is refocusing your priorities. What is your rallying cry or your strategic goals? What are the things that you've got to get finished in quarter four? And then what are the things that can wait until quarter one? And so shifting some priorities, making sure that we're really paying attention to that is really important. Celebrating wins now. We don't want to wait for just year-end reviews. We don't want to wait until we have those meetings. We want to be recognizing individuals and teens early and often. This really creates energy. It helps our people feel appreciated, but also can prevent burnout and just really disengagement, which is something I think we're all constantly fighting against, right? We want to make sure that we're supporting our people, acknowledging that holiday stress, heavier workloads, family commitments, it's all a lot at this time of year. And so we really want to pay attention to flexibility of work, not just stopping work, but being flexible, being balanced as much as we can, doing those mental health check-ins. How are we doing? How are we feeling is so important. And then planning for the transition into the new year. Again, not just stopping or coasting to a stop, but just really making sure that we're planning for how we're going to start strong after we come back in January, making sure that we're reviewing data, that we're reviewing team performance, that we're reviewing lessons learned. Are we pausing to do that? And I think that's the cool thing that a lot of my clients are so focused on right now is they're doing it early. They're doing it in October, which is the, okay, let's do our retreat now. Let's not try to schedule it in the crazy busy time of November or December. Let's do our retreat now and let's really look at how are we doing? How are we focused so we can continue that momentum and really do it in a powerful and intentional way. And I think that's where we don't do that a lot of times at the end of the year is it's not intentional. It's just it's calendar based, it's task-based. Let's just check things off the box and move on. And to set ourselves up for real success, we have to be intentional. From the personal side, our own personal life hacks for busy leaders is setting those boundaries, protecting your personal time during the holidays, during the chaos. No matter what that looks like, really making sure that you're blocking off the time, that you're spending time with your friends and your family and your community, whatever is the most important to you, setting those boundaries up. Paying attention to your own energy management, prioritizing sleep. We should be doing that all year, right? Um, movement, making sure that we're getting out, going for walks, all of those kind of things, and our own nutrition. The holidays are such an easy time for us to lean into gluttony. There's just so many great treats and traditions around the holidays. And so paying attention to those will really help our energy. Doing some intentional reflection. This is really the time now to be looking at your 2025. You know, what has gone well? What do we need to continue going into 2026? What are the things that we never started that we say is a priority? How do we start those strong? And what are the things we need to stop? What are the things that we need to leave behind? And I think this is so important when we're thinking about how we want to be successful in the year at the end of 2026 when we're reflecting back. And the important part to this is if we're putting the same things on our priorities every year, but we're never accomplishing those, is it really that important? Are we really motivated to do it? Stop putting it on there if you're not going to do that. Leave it behind. Say not this year, not next year. Let's really focus on how to set yourself up for success. And as leaders, you have to model this behavior. You got to make sure that you're really being visible in your work life harmony, that you're really setting the tone. If you tell your people that you're giving them time to enjoy their family, don't be emailing them, texting them, calling them unless it's a true emergency. Because the message you're giving them is go spend time with your family. But also any little thing that pops up, I'm going to call you. And so they can never really get comfortable in that harmony. And we see that all the time. So how do we really make sure that we're looking ahead? Is reframing that quarter four as the bridge to quarter one. You're not just finishing, you're cultivating what's your next steps? How do we want to start the year strong? What are going to be our priorities? And so for my teams that I work with that create rallying cries, they created their quarter four rallying cry at the beginning of September. They started setting priorities for quarter four and saying, this is what we're working on. So now in their retreats, in their work, they're starting to set up their quarter one priorities in Rally and Cry, knowing that we are so intentional in quarter four. How do we set ourselves up for a strong start in quarter one? So really encouraging leaders to bring your teams together, doing vision setting now, not in January. I was talking to a company and they did not have their priorities to their team until March. And that creates this real challenge. If you are measuring people on priorities and goals, you got to have that for them at the beginning. They've got to be able to start the year strong. And so it takes this intentional work right now. And so I want to make sure that you're really paying attention to that and doing this intentional work. And this is something we're going to talk about over several episodes. We really want to, how do we create this rally and cry? How do we communicate the rally and cry? How do we uh really lean into this? And why is it so important? So as you think about this episode and you're thinking about October, which is the episode's gonna come out, and then October is a day away, right? And that is quarter four. So I want you to really think about how you're gonna care for your people, how you're gonna set them up for success, how you're gonna set your company up for success, and how you're going to really celebrate the hard work that everybody has done this year. You know, whether it's been the best year of your company's life or maybe the most challenging year of your company's life, your employees need to understand that they're appreciated, that they're valued. It's that encouragement. It's how do we show them that we love them and care about them and want them to continue to be on our team. We want to support them and make sure that they know how meaningful they are. So I want you to really think about the way you finish this year, it will define how you start next year. What you do now lays that groundwork. So don't coast into the end of the year and don't come to a stop. Don't lose a month of productivity because you have always done it that way. Just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean that you have to do it that way this year. So be intentional, create some strategies. Let me know how I can help. I want to hear from you. This is the type of work that I do so much of is when we talk about leadership and we talk about strategy, we have to have accountability. And we can't have accountability if we don't have priority, priorities, and structure around what we do. So a few things I want you to think about. When we I love homework, I love having you all do some work. So I want you to do some reflections as we close out the episode. So I want you to think about in 2025, where are you chasing busy work instead of meaningful impact? Is there stuff that you're doing that's taken away from the strategy and what's really important for your team to be doing? Um, I want you to think about who on your team deserves recognition now and how you're going to celebrate them. Think about the projects and tasks and initiatives that should be moved to quarter one instead of trying to force it down people's throat. Does it need to be done right now? Or can we maybe pivot a little bit for some of this intentionality? And then I want you to think about what lessons that you've learned this year that you can carry on until into 2026. From a personal standpoint, I want you to be thinking about how you can create harmony between your work demands with your holiday and family commitments and be really intentional about it. I want you to set boundaries and think about where am I overcommitting and where can I say no? We all, so many of us have the fear of missing out, but I want you to embrace Jomo, the joy of missing out. What are the things that you get to say yes to when you say no to other things? And what are those daily and weekly habits that you can put in place now that allows you to really finish the year super strong? So it final wrap-up is what is one thing I can do in quarter four to set me up for momentum in quarter one. What goals do I want to refine or release going into 2026? And how do I want my team and myself to feel as we start the new year? It goes fast. We say this all the time, right? Time just keeps speeding up. So be intentional, do great things, and really set yourself and your team up for success. It will help you with stress management, energy management, all of the things that we all need this time of year. So I appreciate you joining me for this little short nugget piece of the path to leadership. Hopefully, there's some good things in here that will help you go strong into the next year. If something's meaningful in here, please share the podcast. It is so helpful for me to get the message out there. And I appreciate the people who have shared it. I've had a couple people reach out to me and say, hey, this was forwarded to me by a certain person, and I just want to say that I really enjoyed it. I want to hear from you. What topics do you want to hear about? Who speakers do you want me to bring on that you want to hear more from? I love doing the podcast. It it brings me such joy, and I want to make sure that I'm bringing value to you. Also, it's really helpful for me if you will share comments about the podcast. No matter what podcast platform you listen in, five stars and leave a positive review. It really helps as the podcast continues to grow. Thank you so much, everyone. Good luck. Welcome to quarter four. Here we go. Let's finish strong. Thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you next time on the path to leadership. Have a great day, everyone. Bye.
