March 2018

No One Does Anything for YOUR Reasons

I’d love to be more influential. I’ve read a lot about it, but I can’t seem to figure it out. I’m not the kind of person who oozes charisma. I don’t think I look the part, nor am I much of a smooth talker or extroverted life-of-the-party type. If I’m honest, I’m pretty dorky.

So why do I get asked to lead new projects? Why have people turned to me to orchestrate change? To run trainings? To grow sales? Why do I end up in positions of authority despite being the least-knowledgable (and never the smartest) person in the room?

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Learning is Destructive

Often, we think of learning as a purely additive experience. For example, if I read an article about parrot fish living on the Great Barrier Reef, when I previously didn’t know a thing about sea life off the coast of Australia, I gain something. It adds to my collection of facts, like a new piece of furniture in a room.

The same might go for some new fruit in the grocery store, a new app on my phone, or a handy new way to say “thank you” to a friend in Turkish. Life’s lessons, however, are rarely so simple. They aren’t like adding furniture to a room; they’re like moving walls and replacing doorways. To rebuild the room, something’s gotta feel the business end of a sledgehammer.

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