Ending One Year & Starting the Next
Year-end is a threshold. An opportunity to settle accounts, name uncomfortable truths, and intentionally decide what continues forward and what does not.
Closing a year well means settling debts and collecting what is owed; not just financially, but physically, emotionally, relationally, operationally, and organizationally. It’s a time to examine what genuinely worked in 2025 and what drained energy, trust, health, or momentum.
This kind of reflection can help you start exploring:
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What strengthened us?
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What cost more than it returned?
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What patterns (personal or organizational) do we no longer want to carry forward?
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What systems supported wellbeing, and which ones undermined it?
Only after that honest accounting can we responsibly look ahead.
Once that is done, as a friend of mine says, this is the moment to “dream with the lid off.” What is possible in 2026 that may not have felt accessible, or even imaginable in 2025? For yourself. For your family. For your team. For your organization or community.
Vision without reflection is a waste of experience. Reflection without vision can become stagnant.
If you don’t have a deliberate process to close out the year and orient forward, for yourself, your family, your leadership team, or your organization; it’s not too late!
There's time for:
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Setting aside protected time
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Gathering both data and lived experience
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Including the right voices, not just the ones you like to hear
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Capturing insights in a way that doesn’t get lost
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Designing how progress will be monitored over time
Once a clear vision for 2026 exists, goals and strategies can follow. This sequence matters. Pause. Reflect. Vision. Design systems. Act!
If support would be useful through 1:1 coaching or facilitated planning for a team or organization, I’m here!
Trust: The Currency we are Burning Through
Over the past few months, I’ve been doing pro-bono coaching with federal workers who were recently laid off. Mission-driven people, suddenly facing uncertainty about their futures. In nearly every conversation, one theme surfaced quietly but consistently:
Trust has been broken.
Not simply because of layoffs, but because of how decisions were handled or messages were delivered.
When people are treated like numbers instead of humans, trust erodes. When trust erodes, engagement fades. Motivation declines. And what remains is a workforce that may still show up, but no longer feels invested. This isn't just about the federal workforce. This is also happening in tech, in oil & gas and beyond.
I’ve lived this personally. Early in my career, I was furloughed and later laid off. My direct supervisor was transparent and honest about what he knew and didn’t know about our large contract ending and being furloughed. That honesty mattered. It gave me agency and clarity in an uncertain moment.
What followed was different. After my furlough, I was informed by the President of our company that I was being laid off, and that my performance review was being changed because the giant corporation needed everyone to fall on a bell curve and it would have been questionable laying off your top 1% performer. The layoff itself was manageable for me at that point in my life and my career. The abandonment of integrity is what stayed with me.
With hindsight, I can understand the business constraints of trying to place a person of my caliber who didn't at the time have the credentials or title needed to be placed on another contract without effort. What I can’t reconcile is taking the lazy way out instead of leading with creativity, courage, and respect. if you have to alter a performance review to justify your decision, you probably need to review your decision. I may have been laid off either way, but that approach tainted that chapter for me. Leaders always have choices in how they treat people, even when outcomes are hard.
I was reminded of this again recently while guest lecturing on Total Worker Health at the University of Washington. Across industries,construction, healthcare, aviation, public service, the message from experienced professionals was strikingly consistent: uncertainty is high, trust is fragile, and people are exhausted.
Their solutions were simple and directly aligned with Total Worker Health:
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Leadership commitment to the safety, health, and wellbeing of the workforce
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Workforce engagement in shaping solutions
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Clear, accessible communication that doesn't rely on hierarchy or insider networks
People are tired. People are scared. People are angry. And those emotions don’t stay at home, they come to work.
Leadership in times like these requires three things:
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Regulation – care for your body and mind so you don’t lead from reactivity or fatigue
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Honesty – name what is known and unknown without speculation or false certainty
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Integrity – treat people with dignity, remembering the human impact of every decision
People will remember how you handled this moment. Whether you are in a moment of abundance or uncertaintity, your people need to know where they stand right now. They are watching chaos unfold around them.
Even in uncertainty, we can be engines of wellbeing. The way to keep people engaged is not to avoid hard conversations, but to engage, communicate, and move through the unknown together. Even a "bad" ending can be delivered with dignity and respect.
Check out my article in ABM from April for more on this topic
Dopamine Reset Program Kicks Off January 1st!
High-performing systems, human or organizational, can’t run on constant stimulation.
The Dopamine Reset Challenge is a short, accessible reset for leaders and individuals who want more focus, steadier energy, and a healthier relationship with stress, technology, substances, and productivity.
You will be guided by a professional coach, a registered yoga and meditation instructor, and a licensed professional counselor who have designed this program to show you what is possible in 31-days when you commit to replacing or reducing the behaviors that are draining your human potential. I hope you'll join us. February you will be grateful!
Wishing you, your family and your team Happy & Safe Holidays...and if you're in Alaska, MORE SNOW!
Naomi DuCharme |[email protected] | 907-830-1100
Integrating Wellness Solutions: Where safety, health, and wellbeing aren't standalone programs or initiatives; they're outcomes of well-designed, integrated systems at work and at home.
© Integrating Wellness Solutions | Becoming Engines of Wellbeing 2025
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