Just listening to Lisa Haneberg’s podcast with Bill Strickland. I can’t get enough of these ideas. They consider a really powerful question along the lines of:
Will your life be a reflection of your environment or a reflection of your vision of how you want the world to be?
How can we build a relationship with our clients that is strong enough to allow us to ask this question?
If you have done my enterprise coaching programme you will (I hope) recognise this as a classic and powerful ‘confrontational’ question. It is one that we should aspire to ask in our work with clients.
Making the right choice in relation to this question could be fundamental in helping stimulate a more enterprising culture in some of our most disadvantaged communities.
We should also consider this question in relation to our own practice and the nature of the relationship with our own organisation. If our organisation is obsessed with outputs and targets does that mean our service needs to reflect that? If our employer is bureaucratic and process driven do we choose to reflect that – or a more entrepreneurial culture?
Do we have the courage to take a different route?
Bill talks about changing the environment, physical and psychological, to provide a context that is affirming, positive and facilitative of peoples’ assets rather than focusing on, labelling and magnifying their deficits.
Enterprise professionals as custodians of the human spirit. What a vision. Now where was that business plan.
Give the podcast a whirl – watch the videos – you could even read the book!
