Helping Others Discover Their Own Solutions
When I was in Kindergarten, we lived in San Antonio, Texas. It was the 1970s, and my parents bought me a bright blue Schwinn bike with a white banana seat covered in pink flowers. The bike had a white basket and streamers on the hand grips that fluttered metallic blue and silver when I went fast. My dad added a bell so I could let people know I was coming.
Like most kids, I started with training wheels. They wobbled, but I quickly learned they would catch me if I lost my balance. The better I got with the training wheels, the more my dad would adjust them, so it took longer and longer for them to catch. Eventually, my dad recommended we take them off. It was time for me to learn to ride without them.
My dad gave me a wonderful pep talk, bolstering my confidence, letting me know he’d seen me with the training wheels, and he knew I didn’t need them anymore. I was scared, but he assured me he would get me started and hold onto the back of the seat until I was ready. As I pedaled my little heart out, I kept saying, “Don’t let go. Don’t let go.” His voice came close behind, “I’m right here.”
I kept pedaling, faster and faster. “Don’t let go,” I repeated. That’s when I heard him from a distance. “I already did. You’re doing it!” I crashed immediately, but I got right back on and by the end of the afternoon, it was as if I’d been riding my whole life.
As we age, many of us become less willing to take risks, try new things, change our minds, or heaven forbid, fail. Along with our bodies, our thinking calcifies and becomes more rigid.
As a communications professional dedicated to helping people clarify their messages so they can build relationships, I’ve been thinking about how to effectively chip away at some of this calcification.
When was the last time you changed your mind about a person or idea? Can you think of a specific example? Do you remember what made you rethink your position?
I just finished a book by Adam Grant titled, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, where he explores the idea of open-mindedness and how people can inspire others to change their minds. It probably won’t surprise you to find out that sharing our own views repeatedly and then ensuring we don’t hear a response by plugging our ears while singing, “La, la, la, la, la, la, la” isn’t the most effective way to communicate. Yet, isn’t this what we so often do, albeit with a little more subtlety?
I really want to figure out how to support real and lasting change — how to help my clients build company cultures that bring out the best in each employee. How can I encourage or even facilitate shifts that begin in individuals and ripple out in all directions to create systemic change? Is there a way that I, one individual, can help mend the ever-deepening social and political rifts in our country and in our world?
I’m part of a community stewarded by Carol Sanford (seed-communities.com) that seeks to build people’s capacity to live and work regeneratively and this group has helped me develop and evolve my ideas.
As I write this, I imagine some of my clients getting curious, maybe Googling seed-communities to see whether this could be a good fit for them, and I imagine others sitting back in their chairs while rolling their eyes and smiling, because I am the token “lefty” in their circle of influence. I can almost hear them: “There she goes again, trying to save the world.”
Clearly, I work with people of widely differing social and political views. Yet, for me to accept an individual or organization as a client, they must align with my values of treating people fairly and offering a product or service that benefits the community they serve. Many of my clients are not as different as they first appear. Their rhetoric and methods may differ, but many of their goals and values have common themes.
As a Certified B Corp, my company has already committed to being part of a movement that seeks to make business a force for good, to consider all stakeholders as we make decisions about what we do and how we do it. How can I inspire others to join in?
The key, I believe, is taking the time to listen to others attentively, seeking common ground to build on, letting go of being right and dedicating ourselves to developing the capacity for introspection. Telling someone how things are is of limited use. Helping someone realize a truth for themselves, on the other hand, allows new knowledge to sink all the way in.
As with any sustainable change, it starts with us. Each of us can begin by better understanding our own motivations and capabilities, by digging into our reasons for thinking the way we do, by bringing conscious attention to our daily lives. We can approach each situation with a clear aim in mind, one that includes helping each person contribute at their highest level. We can create developmental processes that allow people to embody new knowledge.
Do you remember learning to ride a bike? No book or video could have imparted that embodied experience. You just had to find your balance — to feel it, and once you did, no one could take that ability away from you. How do we create business practices that allow for those sorts of embodied experiences? How do we help people discover their own truths, to find their own solutions?
I think we start by supporting work cultures that embed processes that encourage innovation and self-discovery.
