George Couros’s post below is a great reminder that if we want to reach people and help push their thinking in new directions, we must begin by going to the spaces where they are most comfortable. “It is not about them coming to you, but you going to them.”
“. . . I discuss this in “Innovate Inside the Box“:
“The only way to help move people forward is through building relationships and understanding where their journey begins, not focusing solely on where you want them to be.” From a post by George Couros
The above was in an update email from George Couros that I received. It made me think that we need to change the way we approach people with change and innovation proposals. We must try to try to see their world and how they work through their eyes. We must “see” where they are and with what they struggle. We must start from where they are and work on building relationships with them before we introduce new ways of practice or working.
What struck me is that we cannot start by showing them where you might want them to be at the end of the journey but we must start in their space, going to where they are. “Focusing solely on where [we] want them to be” is an easy way to foreclose them from joining us on the journey. We must start inside their space, develop relationships, listen to their thoughts, beliefs, values, struggles, and how they think their practice is working or could be better.
We must remember that we did not reach the place where we want others to be without that journey where we were exposed to new ways of thinking and doing, and then decided to begin our journey to where we wanted to be and where we now want to encourage others to go.
Rethinking Education 