Exploring the Landscape... (versus deciding in advance how much I'll like it)

Enjoying the Scenery of Life…

I spend a lot of time ‘just wondering’.

I muse on the simplest stuff, how much planning the dog puts into his play activities, what came up in a simple conversation with my doctor, and I also muse on the ‘bigger questions’, how to change the economy, what to do with unintended consequences and whether or not I’m even aware of them.

I like the musing and I don’t mind that it goes nowhere, or that it goes somewhere.

…Versus Deciding What I Want to Learn En Route

When I’m with clients though, I like to differentiate for them that we can explore questions that are simply ‘interesting’—interesting with no apparent application to the work we have agreed to do together—or questions that look as if they are ‘interesting and useful’; those latter ones coming with some kind of perceived potential impact in what they are doing,

I want to explore how to be more influential in meetings.

I want to be help my staff become more engaged and productive.

I want a better relationship with my teenagers.

And so on…

Which doesn’t mean that there are no implications or applications of simply exploring the nature of life and the stuff that comes up, large or small, but that in a contracted relationship we put a container around it and we usually identify what is going into that container, at least when we start.

It gives us something to point back to when one or other of us might suggest a diversion. When I’m out on the bike with my husband, like yesterday, we usually have an idea in advance of where we will go, and sometimes we stick to it without question, and sometimes we pause to assess whether we want to go longer, or shorter, or make a change to the plan.

Neither one is better than the other, and I know his enjoyment of the ride isn’t fixed to the route he had in his mind when we set out—unless he thinks it is of course.

It’s the same with our personal reflections and development of this thing I usually call ‘leadership’; what you might also be doing with the people around you.

We don’t necessarily see more by staying on the path we set, or by straying off it, just that sometimes we think we will.

We don’t necessarily enjoy one more than the other, unless we think we will.

Or know that one will have more impact than another, unless we think it will.

And that’s also a cool place to explore.

With love,

Cathy