HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER
Title: The Grass is Greener on This Side
Competency: self-development
Who benefits: everyone
Consultant Usage: coaching, counseling
What’s it about? I am going to deviate this week from my normal pattern of reviewing something of interest related to this site. Instead I would like to share an “aha” moment I had this weekend. It is most likely not an original thought. In fact, I may have had it before. And I will bet most you have had this same thought too. But it is a good one to pull off the shelf every once in a while and consider.
The conception of this thought began as I was finishing up a book for a book club I belong to. The author was writing about her experience as a caregiver. This highly educated woman had taken a minimum wage job for a few months as a personal journey to deal with unfinished business with her deceased mother.
While the book has much to recommend it, something kept tugging at me. Something wasn’t right. And then near the end it came to me. While this woman gained tremendous self-insight and self-learning about herself during her “journey”, at the end nothing changed.
There is more to it than that, of course. But it prompted me to think about a woman I knew several years ago when I was the interim Director of Human Resources for a small government agency. She and I hit it off, so she would pop into my office at least twice a week to share the latest gossip and her work struggles. (I viewed gossip as source of which way the wind is blowing – I didn’t encourage it but I did pay attention – occasionally it gave me the opportunity to prevent a real problem before it occurred.) But it was her work struggles that intrigued me. There was always “they” and “them” slowing her up, preventing her from doing her best. And “they” and “them” just didn’t understand her.
What was amazing during these conversations was the amount of energy she was expending on self-improvement. She attended seminars, read books, listened to tapes and CDs, and (privately) talked about her personal therapy. She had great personal insight about herself.
Now before I get to my simple thought, allow me a lighter moment. For years I played cards in a monthly poker group. Almost everyone in the group was a psychologist and almost everyone had a Ph.D. A brighter group you could not ask for. I love those guys. But it never ceased to amaze me how this very bright group of people could get hooked into the game of “If only”. If only I had one more spade. If only my 10 was a jack. If only I had one more ace.
To me, all three of these stories have a common thread. All three stories relate to human resource development and specifically the professional evolution of emotional intelligence. There has been such a great push to know yourself better and know how you impact others. Self-insight, Self-knowledge, Self-learning, Tapping into the intrapersonal voice.
But to what end is all that insight/knowledge if everything remains the same. The author is still angry, the employee is still blaming, my poker buddies are (probably) still griping.
So what is my simple thought? It is that the journey to self-discovery and personal knowledge is not the same as self-development. These days there is a large “feedback industry” (360 feedback, personal coaches, etc.) out there. And for good reason. But how much of the feedback stops at the personal learning stage and never becomes personal change?
Self-development is when you put your insights into actions and change yourself in relation to those people around you or situations you find yourself in.
So go out there and learn something about yourself…and then ask yourself how you can effectively use that information. Or in poker parlance, learn to play with the hand you are dealt. When one is able to do that, the grass is greener on this side!
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