That meeting about qualities and proficiencies was so lively that none of us wanted it to end.  As you’ll see in this video, we have much more to do, so we hope you will join us in this process! (Subscribe at our What’s New blog to be notified of upcoming meetings.)

This topic seems particularly relevant in light of the #NPCons twitter chat last month - how to deal with the fact that consultants are always learning, always reaching for what’s next – and yet clients hire consultants not for what they are learning, but for what they are already proficient in (or at least appear to be!). As we consider the proficiencies and qualities we are seeking in our instructors, we hope this helps you move through your own learning, as you become more proficient at the work you are doing!

What qualifications do we want people have, to teach classes on behalf of Creating the Future?

That question, in any other realm, might begin a conversation that brainstorms qualifications. People might suggest bringing in a faculty development expert. Others might begin suggesting one-on-one mentorships or online classes or other formats for instruction. The question would no doubt breed related questions of “What topics?” and “What content?” and “What format?”

But Creating the Future is a community filled with people who are suspicious of answers until they feel comfortable that they are answering the right question.

Not surprisingly, therefore, as we set out to explore the question of qualifying instructors to teach on behalf of Creating the Future, the questions were our first concern. What questions would create the context for finding the most appropriate and effective answers?”

And so, the search began. Given Creating the Future’s mission – create the world we want by amplifying and accelerating the broad movements that already exist to create that world, what types of education amplify and accelerate movements?

We played around with that question, thinking about movements as grand as the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the US and as local as movements to organize a small neighborhood. Education that has amplified those movements has been…

• Education that reaches people just when they are ready to hear it.
• Education that is practical for what people need right now.
• Education that provides the opportunity to practice.
• Education that is strategy-focused, done in close proximity to people as they are doing their on-the-ground work.

Certainly a larger context than “We need a curriculum expert,” but it still felt too narrow. If that was the education that was available, what would it make possible for the people within those movements? Which led to wondering…

What is a movement anyway? What defines a “movement?”

• Movements are about hope – hope for change.
• Movements are about the feeling that the time has come. That enough people believe that what they have quietly wanted for decades and generations can now happen.
• Movements happen when people say “Enough!”
• Movements are easy for people to plug into wherever they feel they fit. There are practical things people can do, at whatever point they want to join in.
• Movements are about a meeting of the heart. At the core, movements are about shared values.

Ah! Shared values! Shared longing! Shared hope!

Perhaps the kinds of education that will accelerate movements for creating a world where all beings live well will be education that guides people to BE that world now! Isn’t that what is at the heart of Creating the Future’s work – the “thinking and being” that leads to the “doing”? How could education programs help people see that they can BE the world they want, right now?

And so a new question: What causes people to see differently?

• For people to see differently, the message must come from someone they trust.
• For people to see differently, conditions must build trust – often in crisis.
• For people to see differently, there must be demonstrations, stories.
• For people to see differently, there must be the sense that they are stepping into a safe space.
• For people to see differently, sometimes they need to hit rock bottom.

Again, we dug deeper. While it is indeed common that people may hit “rock bottom” before they are ready to see things differently, must that always be the case? We know that people who are in a place of “everything is just fine” must first realize that everything is not fine before they can reach for more. And we know that Creating the Future’s current courses help people move through those stages. And so…

A new question emerged: What caused you to participate in Creating the Future’s programs? What caused you to say, “This is a place I want to be”?

• The thought that my community deserves the best, and I want to be that for them.
• The thought that I deserve to be the best I can be!
• The thought that if I am to reconnect to my community, I must first reconnect to myself. That unless I am whole, I can’t serve others.
• The connection with people who are connected to values in a practical way – connecting values to practical work.
• The thought that Care and Love bring about change. The fact that “care and love” flows through the course, through the Creating the Future community, and then through the groups I work with, which allows them to grow and change.
• The spiritual component of movements, linking self to society.

Which led to linkages.

• The link between small self and big self – a collective sense of self.
• The link between individual mindfulness and social mindfulness (as expressed by Dave Svet and Zach Braiker in our messaging meeting several weeks ago)  
• The link that movements create, for individuals to become part of the whole, to reach collective impact through individual participation
• The link between care and love and values, and practice and practical

We began talking about all of this within a context of Service Learning – not the cold definitions one reads about “community service” but the heart of that learning – reflection, authenticity, empowerment through finding one’s voice, through deep engagement. 

Which finally led to the answer to the question we sought when we began:

What education will amplify and accelerate movements to create the world we want?

It will be education that reaches people when they are ready to hear it, in ways that help them see differently, with the ability to immediately put what they learn into practice with what they need right now.

It will be education that builds trust and shows others how to build trust.

It will be education that helps people step through the various stages in their own personal development, linking the personal to the communal, the individual to the community, all as we move through what may be painful (individually or collectively) to come out the other side towards what is possible.

And most importantly, it will be education that links the spiritual to the practical, giving people ways to act upon their values, to BE “care and love” right now, and to help others be that as well.

That is what our education efforts must be at the core, if they are to accomplish Creating the Future’s mission of creating the world we all want by being that world now.

And as I reflect on what to teach and how to teach it, I cannot help but smile at the lesson within the lesson. That yes, the group found the kernel upon which we can now grow faculty and curricula. But that the path to those answers was found by reaching for the larger context. And that all of that was found in the willingness to ask a bigger question.

You can watch the full meeting or listen (MP3 is below the video) – and please share your thoughts as you explore these questions with us!!

Listen to the Audio Only:
[audio mp3="http://blogs.creatingthefuture.org/walkingthetalk/wp-content/uploads/2013/CTF-_Faculty_Program_Planning_Mar-05-2013.mp3"]

or

Download the MP3
(To download to your hard drive, right-click {or click and hold on a Mac} on the link above and select “Save Target As”.. or “Save Link as”… depending on your browser)

As we begin expanding our programs, it’s clear we are going to need additional teachers who are qualified to teach those courses. Which means it is time to fully develop the Faculty Level of the consultants curriculum.

Having qualified teachers would make so much more possible for communities around the world. The most important result in our minds comes from this observation:

Change leaders shouldn’t have to fly to conferences and far away trainings to learn how to create change. If you can learn about fundraising in your home town, you should also be able to learn how to create a healthy, vibrant future for your community – the reason you’re fundraising in the first place!

Imagine the impact if training in how to create change was as ubiquitous as grant-writing workshops! For that to happen, though, we obviously need qualified teachers.

And before we can develop the Faculty Level of our curriculum, we will need to determine what qualifications those teachers would need to have. Once we know that, figuring out what / how to teach / measure those qualifications is the easy part.

So that’s the question:

1. What would we want to be sure every single one of our faculty knows?
2. What experience would we want to be sure they have?  What qualities would we want to be sure they possess as people?
3. If you’ve participated in other train-the-trainer programs – where the organization doing the training will actually be sending those new faculty out to teach – what criteria do those orgs use for determining whether or not their faculty is qualified to teach?
4. What other questions should we be asking ourselves about faculty qualifications?

Getting very excited to move forward on this huge leap forward for communities everywhere!!!

If creating the world we want means getting people to change what they currently do, how can we get people to change?

That’s a question we hear a lot when we tell people what we’re doing at Creating the Future. We share that we are building a movement for making visionary community results the norm in social change work, rather than the exception. And the standard response is, “That sounds great. But how will you get people to change their ways?”

Consultants and funders and people involved in capacity building work all seem to live with the same frustrations. How do we get people to change?

Here’s what we’ve found about “getting people to change.”

People will change their habits if they are inspired to change.

People won’t change because you tell them to. They won’t change because it’s best practice or because that’s what other groups are doing. They won’t change if you scare them into doing it (they may DO something differently, but they won’t change how they feel about it, which I can guarantee will rear its head somewhere else, when you least expect it…).

But people will move mountains if they are inspired to do so.

So if we want to change norms, change culture, change habits, the recipe is simple:

1. Meet people where they are, with what they think they need.
2. Open the window just a crack, so they can see what’s possible beyond their comfort zone. Create the environment that inspires them and gives them the confidence to take that small step.
3. And for those early adopters who are absolutely ready to take huge leaps forward, provide the means for them to do so as well.

Think about your mission from the top down and from the bottom up. From the people who can’t wait to make massive changes, and the people who believe they just need a little tweak.

Whether it’s about eating one more helping of vegetables a day or changing food policy; about quitting smoking or banning smoking; about learning 3 new consulting tricks or transforming your practice…

How can you meet people where they are, with compassion and wisdom, and then inspire them to just take that next small step into what is possible?

Bill had been put in charge of the group’s effort to train all those boards. Because his real position was regulatory compliance and NOT board work, he began searching the internet to learn all he could about governance training.

By the time Bill called me, he had read – and apparently memorized – pretty much everything I had ever written about boards. (I say “memorized” because he began quoting me back to me – a very odd feeling indeed!)

After just one phone conversation, Bill and a colleague flew to Tucson, where they spent a whole day with us, exploring what might be possible. They asked us to speak at an upcoming conference, where board members from all 50+ boards would be in attendance – and not only paid our speaking fee, but ordered a copy of our board workbook for every attendee. After the conference, we began speaking weekly, sending emails back and forth, to define what was quickly becoming the dream project.

We were about to create a nationwide demonstration project, using 50+ community-based boards PLUS their national board, to prove what Governing for What Matters could make possible in these communities.

Several weeks and emails and conference calls passed. The project kept growing in scope, as did the budget, which quickly grew well into 6 figures. Bill wanted results, and he was excited to create the conditions that would make those results a reality.

Slowly, though, things started to unravel. What began as a single “odd” conversation became more and more odd conversations. For every approach we discussed and created together, Bill would call several days later to say it wasn’t workable – despite his deep involvement in co-creating these approaches!

Where I had learned to look forward to our calls as the highlight of my week, I was now dreading the words, “Bill is on line 1.” And yet, this was the deal of a lifetime! It would put us on the map, give huge credibility to our work! We persisted.

And then one day, after yet another exasperating call, our intuitive and caring assistant, Erin, came out of her office. “Whenever Bill calls, I can’t help but hear your end of the call,” she said. “And it’s just getting frustrating. He is the one who pursued YOU. He is the one who flew all the way here to try to put this together. So why is it that every time he calls, all I hear is you guys getting defensive and trying to convince him? Aren’t we way far along in the process for that?”

Within 24 hours, a letter was sent to Bill, declining to pursue the project any further. And today, five years later, they still don’t have an education program for their boards.

What Was Really Going On
I cannot pretend to know what was really going on for Bill, although I have my suspicions. What I do know, though, is what was going on with Dimitri and me.

Because we wanted the project so badly – because it would be such a huge boost to our overall goals – we were willing to overlook one issue, then another issue, then another.

Those issues, though, were not tiny things, but core pieces of how the project could most effectively achieve both its own goals AND our own long-term goals.

One by one, we had been giving up what was important to us, all because we so badly wanted that job.

Since that time, we have come up with a process for making decisions and negotiating the sorts of major projects that come along every once in a while, usually seeming like they are WOW too good to be true. I’m not talking about the normal, ordinary client work. I’m talking about the dream jobs that will take at least 6 months (and often 2 years) of all-consuming time out of our lives.

The key to the thought process is that we aim at what we really want from our work – the end goals we are aiming for.

Step #1: Know Your Ultimate End Result Goals
Where do you want to be in 5 years? Be very clear about what that looks like – not nebulous “success” but a crystal clear image.  That could be, “Heads of State will call me to consult on world affairs,” or “Communities where I work will experience significant improvement to their quality of life,” or  “I’ll spend most of my time home with my kids, with enough passive income to make that possible,” or anything in between.  What will 100% success look like for you and your consulting practice in 5 years?

While this is not a critical step for day-to-day client work, if you are considering a deal that would consume you for 6 months or longer, it had better help you get closer to your dreams!

Step #2: Identify the Cause-and-Effect Conditions that will Create that Success
What conditions will create the path to your success? It could be “People in general need to know X is possible.” It could be “Organizational leaders in my market need to see me as a visionary thinker who can help them succeed.”  It could be “This particular organization’s decision-makers need to see me in action!” It could be cash flow at a certain level, or X kinds of clients, or ongoing education or etc. and etc. Name those pre-conditions to your own success, as specifically as you can.

Step #3: Understand the List in Step 2
When it comes to big deals, decision-making is often as much an emotional process as it is a logical one. Therefore, to ensure you are negotiating in a way that gets you closer to your 5 year goals, it is helpful to gain some insights into your own psyche. We have found we learn a lot by breaking down the list we created in Step 2, using two categories:

1) Must-Haves: The conditions that must be furthered in every single major effort we embark upon (the deal-killer decision points for every major effort, to ensure it moves us towards our goals). If a project is so big that it will consume almost every waking moment for a year or more (as the board training project would have), that project MUST move us closer to our goals in a dramatic way for it to be worth our time. So we list those “must have” conditions.

2) Wouldn’t It Be Nice: The conditions that don’t need to be present in every single major effort, but it would be nice if they were there. (Usually this is about cash flow. While the Must Have might be “It has to pay my salary” the Wouldn’t It Be Nice usually sounds more like winning the lottery.)

By noting which items in Step 2 fall into which category, we can be sure to emphasize those priorities that will ABSOLUTELY move us closer to our 5 year goals.

Step #4: Linking Our Goals to the Project At Hand
For the first time in this thought process, we will consider the actual project at hand. How will that project get us closer to our 5 year goals? How will the project create the conditions we noted in Step 2? We have found it helpful to create a simple fill-in-the-blank statement for this step:

This project will get us closer to our goal by providing us with _______________ and _____________ and ________________.

Once we’ve created the statement, we do everything short of framing it. We print it in 40 point type and tape it up in every planning session, for every phone call and email. We want to be sure to always be clear about why we are doing the project.  And we also want to see that those items must be present for this to really be worth our while.

Therefore, at every step in the proposal and negotiation process, we remind ourselves of the critical question, “Will this provide us with enough of the things on our list, to be worth the time this major effort will take?”

Step #5: Decision-Making Checklist
Assuming the deal is progressing along and is hitting all the buttons in Steps 1-4, we are now in negotiations for the agreement that will spell out who does what and who gets what. When a consultant really wants the gig, this is where “give and take” often becomes “give and give.”

To avoid the give-and-give trap, we create a checklist with two columns.

Column One: All the things in the “Must Have” list from Step 3.
Column Two: The OPPOSITE of all those conditions. The danger signs. The red flags. List those in detail.

As an example for Column Two, let’s consider the items we noted in Step 2, and then their opposites:

Future potential clients need to know X results are possible (success stories)
Opposite: Nondisclosure / gag order about the work we will have done together and its results.

Organizational leaders in my market need to see me as a visionary thinker who can help them succeed (positioning, branding)
Opposite: All co-created work will be owned by the client. After the gig, I will have no permission to use any portions of that work as my own.

Decision-makers need to see me in action! (visibility)
Opposite: I will be the invisible hand, working behind the scenes.
Opposite: I will have no access to the CEO or the board – only the mid-level staff.

Here is why it is critically important to list as many red flags as you can think of, and to have that list written down and set in front of you:

We humans have the tendency to ignore warning signs if we want something badly enough.

We give up deal-killer conditions because something in the “Wouldn’t it be nice” category is bright and shiny.

More important, though, we will often find that something makes us feel inexplicably uncomfortable – and because we can’t put our finger on why we feel uncomfortable, we acquiesce. Later we kick ourselves because it was our gut talking – and I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t kick him/herself when they fail to follow their gut.

What Step 5 does, then, is to quantify your gut. Your gut is the collective wisdom and experience of your lifetime – the stuff you know so deeply it is in your DNA and no longer in a place where you think about it in words (hence, why you can’t explain why you’re uncomfortable).

To trust your gut, you need to know your gut. And that is what Step 5 does. It stops us from making decisions based on what we want emotionally – often rooted in our fears – vs what will bring us closer to our long term goals.

Here is what we found as we began analyzing why this thought process is effective:

When we are negotiating for something to which we are emotionally attached, it would be one thing if all we did was give away the things that would move us closer to our goals.

In reality, though, we often also agree to do things that actually go directly counter to our goals. So we’re not only agreeing to delay our goals, but agreeing to do things that will directly sabotage our goals!

That is all because we have not quantified what is meaningful and significant. We instead keep it all in our head and our hearts and our “gut.”

Conclusion
If a project is going to take 6 months or more out of our lives, it had better bring us closer to our long term goals.

This thought process is the closest Dimitri and I have come to fool-proofing our creative and impulsive urges to pursue those bright and shiny long-term projects. It is the closest we have come to ensuring that when we first approach such a project, we know what we are getting into and what our deal-killers must be. And it is the closest we have come to heeding warning signs far earlier than we ever had before.

But the proof is in the time-wasting pudding: Using this framework, Bill’s Board Development project was the last time Dimitri and I spent weeks and months only to see it fall through. That was five years ago. Which either means the framework works, or it means we’re about due…

Photo: Everyone is a bit of a lost cause at some time or another… (taken at San Xavier mission, Tucson)

It is no secret that programs are more effective when the people who will be impacted by those programs are the ones to help build them. And it makes logical sense that the time to engage folks in dialogue about a new program is not at the program’s formal coming-out party, but at the moment of the conception of the idea!

And so last month, when we debuted a brand new workshop in Los Angeles, we had first asked for help in developing it. We then performed the workshop, videotaping it and sharing those videos via YouTube.

Having tested the workshop and thought about it after that debut, we are now in a position to consider what it would take for the workshop to be as effective as possible. And we hope you will join us to figure out just what that will take!

Workshop: Background
The workshop is a 3 hour version of our week-long Immersion Course, Consulting to Create the Future. Back in August, when we began planning for this workshop, we asked for input at Twitter and Facebook, and at this post at Creating the Future’s blog. Here are the questions we posed in all those places:

• What is the highest potential outcome for a 3-hour workshop, Consulting that Creates the Future?
• What could be different after the workshop is done – for the participants, for their clients, for their communities?
• What results could we aim to achieve for participating consultants? For their clients? For their communities?

From the responses, the following became our desired outcomes for the workshop:

• In general, we aimed at participants being more conscious of seeing themselves as catalysts for community change. We aimed at having them see their potential and be excited by it.
• We also aimed at participants both being eager to practice what they had learned, and having concrete tools and approaches they could try out.
• Lastly, we wanted those with whom the workshop more deeply resonated to go beyond just trying out what they learned; we wanted them to be excited to learn more, to go deeper into what is possible when we change how we see things.

From there, we had the task of narrowing 5 days of topics down to 3 hours. Here is what we settled upon:

1) Practice in listening for what is possible vs. what is wrong.
2) Practice in creating an environment of possibility.
3) Practice with reverse engineering – problem solving vs. reaching for what’s possible.

We crafted a promotional flyer (located here, if you would like to see the real thing), that told participants they would experience the following:

• Experience new ways of seeing and framing your work, moving beyond problem-solving to reach for your clients’ highest potential for improving their community.
• Discover the power of questions to engage the wisdom that is already in the room.
• Learn how to practice “compassionate listening” – and what to do with what you hear!
• Experience how reflection and modeling can reinforce new knowledge, to create new behaviors.
• Be energized by the shared wisdom of other consulting practitioners passionate about social change.

Approximately two dozen consultants participated in the workshop. After the event, we followed up with an email providing additional information and resources based on questions and suggestions made during the session.

Moving Forward
And so my questions are as follows:

1) To those in attendance, what portions of the workshop (and follow-up information) helped further the difference you had hoped the workshop would make for you?
2) Is there anything you learned that you have already incorporated into your work – and would you share with us what happened?
3) What stood out for you? What surprised you?
4) How could we improve the class, to better aim at the difference you had hoped the course would make?
5) What else? Is there anything we haven’t asked here, that we should have asked?

And for those who were not at the workshop, we would love your thoughts about what we are trying to accomplish. (A sneak preview is in the video below!)

An answer that has consumed my focus lately is one that doesn’t receive a lot of discussion. I hope that will soon change.

It is the fact that in this sector, everyone is an expert. Or at least that’s what we expect to be.

Most organizations that put themselves out there as “solving a problem” consider themselves experts at their work – or if they don’t, they are soon encouraged to do so. Environmental experts and human service experts and historic preservation experts and music experts.

Then there are the funders and consultants and nonprofit resource centers – all vying for who is the smartest person in the room.

And of course, while board members are not experts at the mission, they are frequently recruited for other expertise.

Experts experts everywhere.

What conditions does that assumption of expertise create in this sector? Here’s just a bit of what we’ve found.

1) An expert has the answers, and therefore takes that posture. The expert gives advice, prescribes solutions.

2) The recipient of that advice may or may not want the advice, even if they have asked for it. (Have you ever noticed how often you yourself ask for advice and then bristle when it is given? Have you ever noticed how often someone will ask YOU for advice, and when you give it, they will argue with you about why it wouldn’t work for them? Have you ever noticed how often you say or think, “Well if you didn’t want my advice, why did you ask for it?”)

3) Each of us has wisdom and experience and ideas of our own, that can be tapped to create possibilities.

4) None of us likes someone else telling us what to do. Yes, even if we have asked them for it. Just because we have confessed our weakness (hard to do) and asked for help (hard to do) doesn’t mean we will be happy about the answer!

5) This sector’s modus operandi – experts upon experts – has unwittingly created a situation of pervasive defensiveness. Walls go up. Questions go unasked. Learning and possibility stop.  Rather than “all of us working together,” we unwittingly create “us” and “them.”

The end result of this Culture of Experts is that it becomes hard to learn, easy to fail, impossible to achieve the results our communities deserve. Operating in a Culture of Experts actually makes us more vulnerable to being whipsawed by circumstances, as we sometimes have more of a stake in being right than making a difference.

Success in the Community Benefit arena doesn’t come from being the smartest and the fastest and the best. Yes, you may become the best funded organization, or the consultant with the most clients. But success in the Community Benefit world is about – well – Community Benefit! And none of us can do that on our own.

It is clear that this sector’s potential can only be reached if we link arms together to create the healthy, vibrant communities we all want. To accomplish that, many of the systems we rely upon in this sector will need to shift, from competitive systems that keep us apart to systems that encourage and nurture interconnectedness and interdependence.

And I am beginning to wonder if the assumption of expertise isn’t one of the pre-conditions to changing those systems.

After all, our assumptions and expectations guide our actions, and our actions guide our results. Without a change in assumptions, systems will not change. With so many systems (fundraising, governance, planning, etc.) continually failing to create the change we all know is possible, how many of those failures are at least in part the result of experts believing they know best for others?

Which leads me to the bigger questions:

What would it take for us to give up this notion that we funders and consultants and organizations are smarter than those with whom we are working to effect change?

What would it take for us to rejoice in learning together as equals?

What would it take for “leaders” and “experts” to be those who bring out the leadership and expertise in everyone else?

And how might we change the systems we use for doing our work, to reflect that shared wisdom, that shared learning, that shared leadership?

And it is indeed magical. After last week, I cannot help but see magic in everything around me!

Last week, in a small room papered with wisdom and passion, six of us shared our dreams for the future we want to create. We laughed and we cried and we learned. In between, as those who have taken our class know, we ate and ate some more, nourishing our bodies as we nourished our spirits.

One cannot experience our immersion course without realizing in your bones that every one of our dreams for the future of this planet is realistic, practical, doable. As I closed my eyes to sleep this weekend, I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve; the power we have to turn our dreams into reality overtook me at every turn, making me want to dance, to play, to dream…

If you are reading this in an email reader and the video does not appear, click here to see it.

Every one of these classes feels like it is a dream. For five days, we explore what it takes to create an environment where changemakers can reach for their highest potential.

Governance consultants and program evaluators, fundraising consultants and strategists – they transform before their own eyes (and ours), finding gifts that have been there all along, waiting quietly to spring into action to create the world we all want.

We do our best to model the fact that creating visionary community change is practical and doable.

That working from humility – knowing the wisdom is in the room, and learning how to listen for that wisdom – is practical and doable.

That learning to replace judgment with compassion (and learning the extent to which we do, in fact, judge) is practical and doable.

That kindness can rule not only our work, but our lives.

And that if we consultants can learn what it takes to catalyze change, our clients can learn it, and their communities can learn it – the true meaning of all of us modeling the change we want to see.

“My dreams are bursting at the seams,” says the song. Today, still high from a week where we watched “consultants” grow into their role as “visionary changemakers,” my dreams are indeed bursting at the seams.

And everywhere I look, I see ten million fireflies lighting up the world.

Have a great “lit up” Monday and a great week, all!

With love and admiration to Kim, Tesse, Debbie, Kesha and Dimitri.

For a beautiful a capella version of this song, click here.

The “continuum” is a critical component to the work we are doing at Creating the Future. If we are seeking to engage everyone doing social change work in the very highest potential of that work, that requires asking questions such as, “How do we help bring out that potential in board members? In EDs? In consultants? In funders?”

The answer lies, in part, with meeting people where they are, and then extending a hand to encourage and inspire them to reach for the potential they have had all along and simply have not known was there.

Clearly if we are going to meet people where they are, we need to understand where they are (duh!), hence my living inside these continuums (continua?) for the past month. Wherever people are along the path, we want to be able to meet them and extend that hand.

All of which leads me to a question:
What conditions do you think need to be in place for a professional in any area (ED, funder, consultant, university professor…) to seek the next level of their potential?

I’m not talking about seeking a promotion or other external validation. I’m talking about seeking something inside ourselves. Stretching, reaching, transforming. What makes someone want to take first a baby step into a new way of thinking and being? What conditions need to be in place for them to move from “thinking about it” to “trying it” to “deciding to dive in?”

If you have ever made a conscious choice to reach for the next level of what is possible inside yourself – reaching for your own next level of potential – what conditions led to that choice?

For those who have been through our classes, what conditions led first to your wanting to be there, and then to your choosing to do so? Most people who come through our classes are already doing well in their work – what conditions led to your being ok with shaking that up?

And if you have never sought the next level of your own potential (or do not think you have done so), I am curious about that as well.

As I am considering what it takes for someone to buck the trends and reach for what is lying dormant within them, waiting to be born, I would love your thoughts about what conditions need to be in place for someone to be ready to look inside and go for it.

Thanks, one and all!

For a moment, we get it. We see the infinite and the minute, all in one breath – the forest AND the trees.

That pure, brilliant clarity – how can we as consultants and coaches bring that clarity to our work with clients? And can our clients be the excuse for a practice that brings such clarity to our own lives?

When we sit on that rock overlooking the sea, several things are happening (this is not an exuastive list, by any means…)

• We are giving ourselves time to just be, to barely even think – to just let what really “is” wash over us. We feel like we are coming back to something we knew before we were born, a sense that pre-dates anything we can remember.
• We are seeing life’s inter-relatedness.
• We are getting out of our own skin, seeing the vastness we are part of. You can’t sit on a rock, staring at a vast valley outstretched for 100 miles in any direction, and seriously think it’s all about you.
• There are no demands. You don’t have to be smart. Or right. No expectations.

If you have ever been with someone who is sitting on that mountaintop for the first time, experiencing that sense of WOW for the first time, it is amazing. Watching the effects of that moment, we realize that connectedness to something larger than ourselves – that is something born deep inside each of us.

I am on the train from Perth, Western Australia, to the coastal town of Freemantle. A colleague who commutes from Fremantle to Perth every day had alerted me about the ride. “When we’re heading home, as the train comes around the bend and the ocean comes into view, everyone gets quiet. Heads turn to the window. Just for a moment, every single person on the train breathes. Then we all go back to our lives.”

It is Sunday morning, and across from me on the train are two teenaged boys, acting very much like teenaged boys (which is to say I spent most of the ride thinking, “Do you have any idea what asses you look like?”). The train turns the bend as Lyn had described, and the ocean comes into view. And even those boys become still, turning their heads to the sea. It is astounding how connected we all are to water, that even 16 year old boys acting like complete dweebs stop being dweebs for long enough to connect.

There is something in all of us, even 16 year old boys, that we are all able to come back to. That power is the “touchy feely” stuff we are taught, as consultants, to ignore in favor of the “hard stuff.” The content. The tools and metrics and doing.

But that sense of being, of relatedness, of simultaneous grandness and smallness – that is where our strength lies. That is the source of our power to change, to transform. That spirit is what makes all things possible.

So what, then, would it make possible if we could bring that strength to our consulting and coaching clients?

How would that change our job as consultants – and even, perhaps, the very definition of what it means to “consult?” What would we do? How would we do it?

The Place of Infinite Possibility
Imagine that every time you worked with a client, the room were filled with the same calm sense of being fully present that you might find in that place by the sea, that place on the mountain.
If that was the space you were always occupying with a client, from the time of the very first phone call, what would that make possible?

Could it make possible all the bullet items noted above? Could it allow for bigger, inter-related thinking? Might it eliminate the fear? Create context?

And if even a small part of that result were possible, what could you accomplish?

Suddenly we see that that place of presence, of being, of context – it is not airy-fairy and touchy feely. It is real and concrete. It is the source of their power to transform.

Suddenly changes happen overnight that have been blocked from happening for years. (Think of a time you sat by the sea, and suddenly the entire solution to a long-irking problem appeared fully formed, in all its detail, as if handed to you by the gods.) The concreteness of that reality is astounding.

So what would that take?
It would take creating that environment. It would take encouraging clients to stay in that environment. It would take understanding in ourselves that that environment is where the good stuff happens.

But first it would take being in that place ourselves. Learning to be that. Learning how to practice that. Learning how to stay there.

It takes letting go of the things that no longer serve us. It takes aligning our own work with what is possible. It takes amplifying those parts that connect to possibility, and turning down the volume on the parts that move us away from that possibility.

It takes remembering, touching back to say, “Yes, I thought that once, too. Now I am seeing something more effective – something that will not just solve your immediate problem, but aim you at the change you want to create in our world.”

It is easy for clients to spin off into the day-to-day of what is not working. The day-to-day is why they call. It is what they want fixed.

It is easy for us consultants to get sucked into that as well. The day-to-day is what we have learned to do in our years of experience. Raise money. Establish a recruitment process. Set up a Facebook page. The doing is the easy part, the part we have done so repeatedly it has become as much an unthinking habit as tying our shoes.

As we sit on our own mountaintop, though, the bigger question calls to us. What do we want for our clients? What do we want to make possible for them? What potential do we want to help them achieve for their communities?

Reconnecting with that potential, we see that the difference our clients can make in the world is our own highest potential as consultants.

And so the greatest gift we can bring to our clients is our ability to stay above the reactive muck and mire of solving this or that. Our greatest gift is our ability to stay fully present to our clients’ potential to make a difference, and our ability to encourage and support those clients in staying present to that potential as well.

As consultants and coaches, our greatest gift is our ability to remember the immense power that lies innate within each of us, waiting for the train to round the bend as the ocean comes into view. Our power lies in our ability to hold open that place of potential, allowing our clients to step into their own power.

From the power of that larger context, we will indeed address the day-to-day. But it is our ability to see both the forest AND the trees that will allow us to reach our own highest potential – the potential of our clients to make a difference in the world.