You have an awesome couple of weeks. Things are humming along. You make a couple (maybe many) big decisions. Buzz buzz, humm humm, you and your team are jamming.

One of the decisions (a really big one), is trickier, you have a strong reaction to it, but it's way easier to go for it, and you want to assume good, and others are a "yes", so you do...

You go against your gut (big time). You override. And in that very moment, you whack yourself out of alignment with your personal integrity. (You likely feel this, though subtle, until your brain and reasoning kicks in, making it A-Okay.)

And then oddly... maybe not even right away... things start to go down the tubes. One thing after another falls apart. Gets "hard". Muddy. Sludge. Ugh.

You make more bad decisions.

I’ve spent my entire life learning to build trust. As I grew up, my mom faced significant mental illness, so I learned first-hand how isolating life can be when trust is absent. Over time, I learned to cope with and, after much healing, eventually overcome these challenges. As a business leader, I’ve always been tuned into the telltale signs of mistrust. Frankly, I just can’t bear it when employees get stuck in these toxic patterns. For me, it’s personal.

Can you feel it? 2017 is going to be the year of the values-driven leader. Now more than ever, business leaders are investing in the qualities that matter most when building a truly great business: purpose, leadership, culture, finances, relationships, and community. For all leaders, the new year is an opportunity to refresh your vision and renew your commitment to growing with purpose. That’s where we come in.

I think we’ll look back on 2016 as the end of the beginning of the values-driven leadership revolution, and the start of the next phase. Sometimes we prepare for something without realizing that’s what we’re doing. As I think about the challenges facing business leaders heading into 2017, I think that’s exactly what we — you, me, and all of the values-driven leaders we know — have been doing over the past several years.