Using the Engagement Box

More than a decade ago, I attended a seminar where the facilitator talked about clients’ walls. They felt stonewalled by someone they were trying to reach out to. Focusing on in-person meetings, using the phone, email and even social media, this facilitator shared 5 ways to destroy client walls and overcome reluctant prospects.

From the start, I felt there was something wrong with all of this.

Since 2001, I’ve been working with organizations around the world to understand their clients. Studying research carefully, I’ve also collected hundreds of stories of when people said they felt most engaged in things they needed to do.

From my work, I’ve learned that when client walls go up, the problem isn’t them—its us. That can be hard for people to understand or accept, so I want to share a tool I have created to think differently about it.

Following is my Engagement Box. It can be used by anyone trying to connect with other people, including salespeople, managers, teachers, social workers, politicians and others. It can be especially useful when client walls go up!

Description of the Engagement Box

The Engagement Box is made of four walls, and divided in four by an x axis and a y axis. The x axis is marked “Traditional” at the left, and “Nontraditional” at the right. The y axis marked “Convenient” at the top, and “Inconvenient” at the bottom. This tool is from your perspective as the user.

Each quadrant of the Engagement Box should be labeled accordingly:

Between “Traditional” and “Convenient”, the quadrant should be marked “Traditional & Convenient Engagement”;
Between “Traditional” and “Inconvenient”, the quadrant should be marked “Traditional & Inconvenient”;
Between “Nontraditional” and “Convenient”, mark the quadrant “Nontraditional & Convenient”;
In the last quadrant between “Nontraditional” and “Inconvenient”, mark the box “Nontraditional & Inconvenient”.

Using the Engagement Box

To use the Engagement Box, the first thing you should do is pull out two blank pieces of paper. On the first, draw a line down the middle.

In the left column, write all of the things—everything—you currently do to engagement your clients, whether they’re potential customers, employees, students, food stamp recipients, or others. Write all of this on a piece of paper.

In the right column, brainstorm all of the things you could do to engage your current and potential clients and list them. Remember that in a brainstorm there are no dumb ideas, so don’t inhibit yourself.

When you’ve completed that, take out the blank page and draw the Engagement on it, filling the entire page. Follow the directions above.

On the second sheet, copy the graphic of the Engagement Box detailed above.

Then, read through the columns you’ve written already. On each, circle the items you want to keep doing or start doing.

Then take those items, and write them into the corresponding quadrants of the Engagement Box using the following questions:

Is this activity something that is easy for you? Then it belongs to the “Convenient” axis.
Is this activity something you or your organization has always done? Then it belongs to the “Traditional” axis.

If an activity is “Convenient” and “Traditional” then it goes in the quadrant you’ve labeled “Convenient & Traditional”. Do this in all four quadrants.

Its NOT All About You

When you’ve finished filling out all four quadrants, take a quick tally. Are most of your current activities in the “Convenient & Traditional” quadrant? That means that you’re doing most things for yourself and not for your client. The reason their walls are going up is that you are not meeting them where they are at. Instead, you’re insisting they come to where you are.

Differently, if all of your brainstormed activities are in the “Inconvenient & Nontraditional” quadrant, then you are trying to meet people where they are.

Engaging with your clients, whoever they are, is not all about you—but a lot of it is. As I’ve led thousands of people through this activity, I have seen eyes open and heard the power of learning to see things a new way. Suddenly, business owners have seen where they’re losing customers, principals have seen why students are dropping out, and managers have seen why they can’t retain employees.

By shifting your perspective from meeting your own needs to actually meeting your clients’ needs, you can also see other effects. You might grow compassion, discover empathy and feel reciprocity. You could also stop some of your bad habits and rejuvenate your perspectives towards the people you serve and work with everyday.

Teddy Roosevelt once wrote, “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Ultimately, the Engagement Box can teach you how to show people how much you care.

THAT is the secret of bringing down the walls.

How to Engage Anyone, Anywhere

I don’t sell secrets.

Working with the people in the places where I do, I am often forced to adopt a label. These last few years, I’ve taken to alternatively calling myself a speaker, facilitator, speaker, author and other things. While none of those are inaccurate, none really captures what I do.

What I really do is help people learn to engage more people, more effectively. Using a lot of different methods for doing this, I have spent my entire life doing this. While few of the titles I’ve ever had captured this, my livelihood remains the same.

Want to know how to engage anyone, anywhere? Here are three ways.

How To Engage Anyone, Anywhere

Learn What Engagement Is, and What It Isn’t. Many people want engagement to mean everything to them and their business, organization or life. They want to be engaged all the time in every way they can. In reality, engagement will not allow you to do that. The definition of engagement is “any sustained connection to anything within or around ourselves.” The key phrase there is sustained connection. From an ecological perspective, sustained doesn’t just mean long-lasting, but also includes healthy, welcomed, effective and meaningful. Learn the difference between what you’re trying to engage others in, and what engagement is not. Do you really want people to engage in your topic, activity, place, culture or otherwise?
Speak to the Heart, Touch the Mind. Don’t try to engage with the ways people think about things. Instead, engage with individual peoples’ Heartspace. Heartspace is the engine of personal engagement, and is entered through feelings, emotions and experiences as well as thoughts and ideas. Work with people, not at people; create opportunities for people to do for themselves without creating opportunities for you to do more for them. That’s speaking to the heart and entering personal engagement through Heartspace.
Stop Trying to Engage Other People. Basically, the challenge is for you to accept responsibility. If you’re concentrating on engaging other people, you aren’t focusing on engaging yourself. If you’re engaged in yourself, other people will want to become engaged in whatever you’re engaged in. Like attracts like. The converse is true too: If you’re disengaged, others will not engage in what you’re trying to engage in. That means that if people aren’t becoming engaged in what you’re trying to engage them in, its truly because you’re not engaged in it yourself. The principle behind this concept comes from the Mahatma’s charge that we, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Those three ways to engage anyone will work in schools, community programs, government agencies, businesses, at home and throughout society. What do you think? Share your thoughts, ideas and responses in the comment section below!

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Doing It for the Reward

I don’t think we should be trying to help others until we’ve acknowledged the ways others have helped us.

We should learn how to help ourselves, too, either by helping others or simply focusing on ourselves.

Helping others in order to feel better about ourselves is a trap though.

We have to learn to find happiness in helping others without expecting reward or acknowledgment. Everyone learns that differently: some as missionaries, ascetics, or ministers, while others are artists, teachers, or nonprofit workers.

When we find happiness in helping others without expecting reward or acknowledgment, only then are we truly helping them, and truly benefiting ourselves.

I have learned that in the grand scheme of things, humanity is largely indifferent to our individual, specific existences. I don’t mean that in a demeaning way, but in a realistic way. Where one person dies, a dozen others take their places within moments. Each person is like a finger poking into a sand dune, even the movie stars, movement leaders and presidents.

So if we go around expecting recognition and doing things for others because we’re going to get something out of doing those things, not only are you going to be disappointed, but you’re going to be greedy, indifferent and incapable of actually helping anyone else in any substantive way.

Before helping others, we have to acknowledge how others have helped us, and some of us have to learn to help ourselves. Only then can we actually truly and really do something for someone else. But not until then.

It’s a DIY Life.

I believe that we can each change the world. I believe we can all change our lives, too. After all, it’s a DIY life. Here’s why.

We have to look at the details.

The real challenge of changing the world and changing our lives is to learn to see nuance and acknowledge subtleties in ourselves, in others and all the way around us. In a society that is constantly dumbing us down, we are all becoming increasingly polarized society within ourselves and with other people.

Its a DIY life because we have to look at the details. The systems that want to control us would like us only to look at big pictures and ignore the little things. They anesthetize us with sitcoms and reality tv, paint gigantic swaths of misinformation on the nightly news and internet, and bombard us with too many Facebook friends to actually care for any of them. Looking at the details leads us to caring for the little flower petal pictures made by young kids, hold hands with old relatives, and be kind to strangers on the streets. Little things matter, and living a DIY life teaches us that.

We have to see beyond black and white.

More and more, everyone seems to believe in A/B, either/or, black/white, us/them thinking through reductionism and isolationism. Anyone wants to make a decision for themselves or prove a point to others will just follow the formula taught to us by today’s media:

Be dichotomous and show only two sides to the issue.
Demonize people you disagree with and make sure they know how much you disagree with them.
Point fingers and alienate others whenever possible.

We have to learn to see the colors beyond the outlines drawn for us by other people. It’s a DIY life because of the greys, blues, yellows and awesomeness all around us. We miss those in between areas when we rely on the world to paint our pictures for us. We can miss the in betweens, the both/ands, and the we/us thinking that is inherent in an interdependent world.

We have to hold out hope.

Great ideas routinely die in the hearts of brave and strong people because of this formula, at home, in businesses, across communities, throughout organizations and all around our society. Politics are rotten inside the Beltway, in state houses, and in city halls because of that thinking. Talk shows and the news are generally terrible because of it.

In each and every moment lies hope for the universe and eternity. This DIY life can teach each of us to let go when its time, and hold on when we’re supposed to. It embraces sustainability and eschews disposability by seeing more broadly than just this moment, this place, in this specific way. We have to hold out hope no matter what is going on in the world around us, and that hope won’t come from outside of us; it comes from within. The real hope is for you, and that’s why it’s a DIY life.

We have to accept responsibility.

For almost 20 years, I have taught people to see that we are all part of the problems AND the solutions in our world. We are all responsible for the status of the world today. Whether or not we’re conscious of it and accept it, we are ALL responsible for the world today and we ALL act on that regardless of our best intentions.

It’s DIY life because nobody else can effectively drawn a plan for your life that you have to follow. Your mind belongs only to YOU, and you are the ultimate person responsible for what goes into it and comes out of it. Accepting responsibility means owning up to your station in life, embracing it and moving forward boldly towards who I am and what I’m doing. My station in life isn’t complete, isn’t finished and doesn’t mean that I cannot change. Instead, its the opposite – it means that I’m unfinished, my life is a process, and this is a journey we’re on, not a destination.

We have to begin with ourselves.

Only after recognizing the subversive ways our own hearts and minds have been manipulated can anyone begin the work of dismantling the powerfully oppressive hegemony of injustice throughout our society. Only after recognizing our own fallibility can we challenge our culpability, and only after challenging our culpability can we call others to the carpet. Trying to do it before that makes us hypocritical at best. At worse, it makes us the worst offenders.

Learning to look within, be within and change within ourselves can be a scary, frustrating and obtuse process. That’s why it’s DIY! No human on Earth comes to their born day with a guide prepared to be implemented. Society constantly urges us to rely on large, impersonal engines designed to command and control our movements, actions and thoughts. Beginning with ourselves is the opposite of that; the rewards are boundless.

Then we have to change the world.

When we’ve confronted ourselves, then we can confront others. Then we can take action for social change. Then we can try to change the world. But it all goes back to what old Gandhi said: Be the change you wish to see in the world. It’s a DIY life because the world isn’t waiting for you to change it, and you cannot wait on the world to change. Instead, as you accept responsibility for yourself and lean into DIY, you’ll discover there’s an inevitability to engaging with the world around you and working to transform it, either accidentally or on purpose.

I have learned that we have to change the world because the world we see around us reflects the world within us. When we’re not satisfied with who we are, how we are we cannot be satisfied with the world and how it is. The converse is true, too: When we change ourselves, the world around us has to change because of that change within us. If it doesn’t change, we have to change it. That’s the nature of being human!

Live your DIY life as fully, wholly and meaningfully as you wish. Embrace it! And take action steadily knowing that you can be the change you want to see in the world!

Finding Your Purpose and Passion

And today it became clear again that this life I live and the livelihood I pursue so vigorously is about one thing: I work to foster a world where people live their purpose and passion through engagement. I teach people, I educate communities, I coach agencies, I consult organizations and I write for the world focused on the question of purpose and passion, and how engagement happens.

I believe that within every person everywhere is the possibility of purpose and the fierce urgency of passion, yearning to zip and zoom forth from our fingertips and towards the world. This purpose and passion has no bounds, and once we start to live with it we start to live with ourselves in the highest, most meaningful ways.

For 25 years, I have been tutoring, mentoring, teaching, training, consulting, writing, preaching, speaking, coaching, dreaming, building, demolishing and nurturing this sense of ability within myself, and in community with others. Its been exciting work, especially focused on children and youth who are often excitedly searching for the answers to the questions of purpose and passion for themselves.

Here are a few questions you might ask yourself about finding your purpose and passion:

What do you feel passionate about right now?
Where do you find the most purpose in your life?
Who recharges your batteries the most?
What brings you to life and animates your hands when they’re numb?
Can you make a living from the things you’re passionate about?
How or why not?
Are you surrounded by people who lift up your purpose and passion?
Do you lift up others’ purpose and passion?

Stay with me on this journey – we’re going awesome places!

5 Ways to Get Engaged In Your Life—A Tip Sheet by Adam Fletcher

Personal Engagement Tip Sheets by Adam Fletcher

Personal Engagement is the sustained connection a person has to the world within themselves.
—Adam F. C. Fletcher

Are you feeling disconnected from yourself? Do you have a hard time sustaining connections to other people? You might need to get engaged in your life.

For all the different ways people talk about opportunities, ideas, and purposes for changing the world, few will say what I’m going to say here: If you get engaged within yourself, you will change the world.

That’s not a misprint or anything. The fact of the matter is that more than 50 years ago, Gandhi taught us that we must be the change we want to see in the world.

5 Ways to Get Engaged in Your Life

Here are five ways you can get engaged in your life.

Do an inventory. Make lists, draw pictures or just think about what you’re sustainably connected to right now. One way to get engaged in your life is to really acknowledge what you’re actually engaged in right now. Are there things that you truly love to do? Don’t worry if they’re good, bad, weird, or normal – just write them down or think about them.
Do more of what you love. Again, without judging the value of what you’re doing, simply do more of what you love right now. If it’s not healthy for you or others, you don’t really love it. Learn to see what you really love by recognizing what you think you love right now, and doing more of it. That’s another way to become more personally engaged.
Feel engagement. Engagement is an intuitive, intrinsic feeling that each of us have in response to the worlds around us and within us. Feel it. Feel the difference between engagement and disengagement, truth and lies, freedom and imprisonment. Personal engagement is truly freedom in its highest form, because it doesn’t demand that we do anything for anyone else – only ourselves. In turn, this can change the world.
Touch the world. Without any misgivings or second guessing, be with the people, places, and things going on around you. Dance, sing, talk, listen, hear, taste, smell, move, sit, rest, sleep, and otherwise touch the world. Embrace everything like its the most important thing, and let everything be valuable to you. Feel the value of the world you’re in, and you’ll value the world within you.
Hold nothing in order to embrace everything. There’s nothing to hold onto, and everything to hold onto. When we engage within ourselves we can release the things, people, places, and activities going on around us. Because of that, we can find more meaning, more value, and more purpose to everything around us.

These ways are what I have consistently used to engage myself, and to encourage others to become engaged, too. However, your ways might be different. If you consciously seek to engage within yourself, you can become engaged.

My Personal Engagement Tip Sheet Series (PETS) can allow you to see clearly who you are, what you want to change, and how that can happen.

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Adam Fletcher is available to train, coach, speak, and write about Personal Engagement across the US and Canada. Contact him to learn about the possibilities!

Expanding on Capacities to Change the World

The other week I published 16 Capacities to Change the World. So many of you responded so awesomely to it, that I have been thinking over each item carefully for the last week. Today, I’m going to elaborate on each point and add some more to the list.

I call these items “capacities” because they provide definition to our vessel in life. They determine what we can do, who we can be, and where we are. Each of us is absolutely limitless in our capacities. The following attributes are what I’ve experienced and observed are useful when working to change the world.

The Original List

You’ll remember that the list included these items: Change Management; Humility; Collaboration & Teamwork; Conflict Management; Decision-Making; Diversity & Cultural Competency; Coaching; Motivating & Empowering; Personal & Professional Goal Development; Knowledge Management; Problem-Solving; Training & Facilitation; Verbal & Written Communication/Public Presentation; Personal Engagement; Compassion; and Systems Thinking.

Expanding Capacities

In the original list I was originally considering the skills that a person needed in order to be a successful change agent; you’ll see that I began to add on the dispositions I know are important at the end.

The 18 expanding capacities are Challenge; Focused; Deliberate; Facilitate; Release; Listen; Simple; Action; Help; Amaze; Driven; Funny; Bold; Learning; Openness; Community; Passion; and Humility.

Humility: Despite all the things I may have accomplished in the past, there will always be challenges ahead. No matter what happens, I want to always respectful towards everyone. I love to celebrate my successes, but not in an arrogant or boastful way. I believe in a quiet confidence because in the long run my character will speak for itself. I strive for humility.
Passion: What keeps me going? It’s passion for engaging people. I’m inspired because I believe in what I am doing and where I’m going – even when I don’t know where that is! I don’t take “that’ll never work” for an answer. A lot of people tell me that the Engagement Revolution will never happen; imagine if I had listened to them so far! I have a positive and optimistic attitude because I have open eyes and am inspired by everyone around me. I am passionate.
Community: I want to build community, not just colleagues. I serve children, youth, adults, and organizations by removing obstacles and enabling people to succeed on their own terms. The best decisions and ideas are made by people who take action, and I want to foster action among people. I collaborate with people and organizations to address the challenges in their worlds. Beyond that, I watch out for my community and care for others. I work together and play together with my community because our bonds go beyond the typical consultant/coach/trainer/speaker relationship. I work to build community.
Openness: I am an open book. My availability and vulnerability can lead to creating strong relationships built on trust and courage. I can use these strong relationships to accomplish so much more than I can otherwise. It’s not easy getting there! I strive to always act with integrity, be compassionate and loyal, and try to be a good listener. At the end of the day it’s not what I say or do, but how I make people feel that matters the most. I cares about others, both personally and professionally. Peeling away the layers, I work to be open.
Learning: I work to S-T-R-E-T-C-H myself both personally and professionally. I see the differences between being stuck in a rut and moving through a groove. I know everyone, including me, has more potential than we ever realize. I work to constantly unlock that potential, both in myself and the people I work with. I will never “get it right,” and that’s a reality I gladly accept. The only way I can solve new problems that arise is by learning and growing myself to meet them head-on. I am learning.
Bold: I am bold and try not to be reckless. I’m not afraid to make mistakes because that’s one way I learn. I take appropriate risks and I encourage others to take risks too, and I use my risks to make better decision. I believe gut feelings. Everyone can develop gut feelings about decisions as long as they are open to new ideas and can allow failure to happen.
Funny: I have a sense of humor, and I know it’s good to laugh at myself frequently. Living shouldn’t be drudgery or toil. I can fun and be goofy even when there’s work to get done, and I get lots done. Being a little goofy requires being a little innovative, and I am always looking for a chance to fully engage in my life and bring out the fun and goofy side of it.
Driven: I constantly change and embrace it with open arms. I never accept status quo and I’m always thinking of ways to change processes, perspectives, and opinions, hopefully for the better. Without change, I can’t continue to be useful to myself or other people. I am driven.
Amaze: I think anything worth doing is worth doing to amaze. To amaze, I differentiate myself by doing things in an unconventional and innovative way. I go above and beyond the average level of action to create an emotional impact on people and organizations and to give them a positive story they can take with them the rest of their lives. I seek to amaze.
Help: Help is a key word for me. I offer it and ask for it often. Often, I can’t do everything required in a project, so in a large part, part of my livelihood is helping others do their projects successfully. I am not expected to know all the answers, but I know where I can go to ﬁnd them, and I share that with others. I help myself help others.
Action: I avoid the risk of not trying and the regret of wishing I had done something. When I was young, I knew that it would be far more haunting to live with the regret of having not followed my instincts than to have followed my gut and failed. I have lived in action and done risky things. I see my ideas when I have them and make note of them. That’s why I always have a notepad. If I think an idea is compelling, I go after it. We live life only once, and we all die too soon. I always try. I take action.
Simple: More and more, I realize the power of simplicity. Since I am in the business of ideas, I want to share them as effectively as I can in our complex world. I do that by being simple. It takes more mental space for me to create something simple or communicate something complicated in basic terms, but ultimately, that’s what people want. I don’t need to explain everything the first time around. I need to facilitate the best tailored learning experience for you and your organization or community. I always need to break down knowledge into easily digestible, clear statements and actions. I work hard for simplicity.
Listen: I speak by listening. Instead of rushing to come up with a quick reaction to what someone has said or done, I listen to them. When the time is right, I respond with knowledge. When I was younger, I assumed that the world was more interested in me than I was in it, so I spent most of my time talking. I was generally under-informed, I shared whatever I thought, I tried to be clever, and I thought about what I was going to say instead of listening to what someone else was saying to me. I have learned to slow myself down and engage rather than debate. I take time to really listen to what people say, and I try to learn from everything I hear. I listen to people.
Release: I have to release everything I do when it’s done, and just let it go. Instead of trying to figure it out, I just let it be and accept that it is what it is, nothing more or less. It doesn’t determine my worth, others don’t validate my choices, and my contributions never go unnoticed, even if it seems like it. I release what I do when it’s done.
Facilitate: I provide appropriate support to learners. I do not train people, because we don’t do tricks or routine work. Instead, I adapt and contrast, modify and transform. I encourage learners through questions and activities that build confidence, stretch understanding, and foster engagement in learning. I facilitate learning.
Deliberate: I regularly stop to check my intentions and affirm my actions, so that what I’m doing actually reflects who I am. If I’m not aware of why I do what I do, I am disconnected from what matters to me. If I’m disconnected, I’m ineffective. Staying aware of my intentions and being deliberate allows me to guide my work with purpose, and challenge myself when its time. I am deliberate.
Focused: I work to change the world, no matter what I’m doing. I do not look for fame or fortune, and I reject greed and deceit. Instead, I constantly look for opportunities to serve others, and I share my energy and efforts as often as I can. I see the ripple effect in everything I do, not just the flashy or huge things. I know every action in my life sets off an entire cascade of responses whose overall impact is huge, and I know this is true for others, too. I am focused.
Challenge: When a I get too attached to the way things are, I lose the the greatest freedom of all: the freedom to fail. Without feeling like a failure, I don’t have to assume that a slight misstep is a deep plunge into the abyss. Instead, I step forward to challenges and see them each as an opportunity to innovate using a smart idea or strategic thinking. When I’m stepping up to challenges, I accept that failure is going to happen while I’m growing. Ultimately, I won’t become a better person because of how I respond to success, but instead, what I do with failure. I accept the challenge.

The entire list of capacities to change the world is now: Change Management; Humility; Collaboration & Teamwork; Conflict Management; Decision-Making; Diversity & Cultural Competency; Coaching; Motivating & Empowering; Personal & Professional Goal Development; Knowledge Management; Problem-Solving; Training & Facilitation; Verbal & Written Communication/Public Presentation; Personal Engagement; Compassion; Systems Thinking; Challenge; Focused; Deliberate; Facilitate; Release; Listen; Simple; Action; Help; Amaze; Driven; Funny; Bold; Learning; Openness; Community; Passion; and Humility.
Respond to these capacities in the comments section below and let me know what you think!

16 Capacities to Change the World

There are a lot of people who want to change the world. However, many get frustrated because they don’t know what it takes.

After more than a decade of teaching people around the world how to do it, I’ve decided to share this list of key skills, abilities, knowledge, and dispositions. They’re based off my life as I’ve worked for social justice, and they are what I’ve seen consistently in my mentors, heros, and students. These capacities make the difference between people who talk about changing the world and people who actually change the world.

14 Capacities to Change the World

Change Management—Successfully move people, leadership, and constituents through transitions and times of change.
Humility—Develop and maintain a modest view of your own importance in public and personal perspectives regarding your efforts.
Collaboration & Teamwork—Build and sustain the necessary group and cross-group cohesion and operations needed to maintain success.
Conflict Management—Identify and successfully navigate conflicts and problems from an operational, day-to-day perspective.
Decision-Making—Discern how, when, where, and why to make decisions, and how to help others make decisions, both on a micro- and meta-level scale.
Diversity & Cultural Competency—Acknowledge, embrace, and enable all sorts of differences as powerful motivators and assets.
Coaching—Guide, transition, and mentor others through their daily professional and personal challenges without attempting to teach or lead them.
Motivating & Empowering—Meaningfully engage others in consistent, substantive, and sustainable ways?
Personal & Professional Goal Development—Recognize your own goals and their relevance to your position, as well as help others do the same.
Knowledge Management—Using diverse ways of identifying, developing, sharing, and effectively using the knowledge of communities, individuals, and organizations to change the world.
Problem-Solving—Effectively, consistently, and realistically identify, address, critique, and re-imagine challenges.
Training & Facilitation—Successfully identify and meet the needs of people through group training and individual learning.
Verbal & Written Communication/Public Presentation—Engage the public through customer service and imaging.
Personal Engagement—Foster your own connection to the work you’re doing, maintain that connection, and sustain the relevance of the work you’re doing throughout your own life, as well as help others do the same.
Compassion—The ability to establish and foster empathy with people and places outside of your own personal or professional sphere.
Systems Thinking—Seeing how small things that seem separated can create big things through complicated interactions.

If you’re really interested in these capacities, send me a message for my free self-assessment tool. I also provide training and coaching in each of these capacities for groups and individuals.

Let me know what you think in the comment section below!

5 Ways to Get Back Into ACTION

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must shown.”

– Charles Dickens in David Copperfield

I’ve been getting sloppy.

After almost two decades in this work, there was a few minutes where community building became a bit passe for me. It seemed like every game had been done, every workshop facilitated, and every different attempt to change the world was already tried. Fortunately for me, the universal 2×4 swung around recently and smacked me upside the head.

Working with a client organization locally, I’ve been connecting the dots again. Faced with teeming challenges that have always been obvious and today seem more glaring than ever, I know there’s a lot of work yet to be done and innovations still ahead. New approaches to transforming the world have to be developed, and more people need to be brought into the work of transforming their own lives and the communities they live in.

Here are a some ways I’ve been reconnecting with work to change the world.

5 Ways to Get Back Into ACTION

Taking Account: Its easy to rest on your laurels when you think you’ve gotten things done. That was the whole point early on, doing things for the sake of getting them done- that’s what AmeriCorps taught us. But by taking account of where we’re at and where we need to go, I’ve learned that there’s more still that needs to get done.
Seeing New Things: Flipping through the latest email newsletter by my favorite orgs isn’t enough. Instead, I’ve been catching up with my past clients, reading through new research, and diving into the latest tools from radical projects around the world.
Reconnecting: I have many friends, colleagues, and homies in this work across North America and around the world. I’ve been reaching out to them and talking about what they’re doing, seeing, feeling, and believing at these points in our careers. Fascinating, to say the least.
Digging Into Existence: Sitting down with clients and spewing out tons of new information, ideas, and research is interesting for only one side of that equation. I’ve been remembering to go into inquiry mode and ask hard questions that hold practitioners accountable for our assumptions in our work, and dig deeper into how transformation happens, rather than status quo.
Get PASSIONATE: My best work is my most determined work. Its focused on the things I care most about, focused most on, and determined enough to make a difference. This passion, my raison d’etre, is engaging people deeply within themselves and to the world around them. What is YOURS?!?

These are some simple steps that I’m taking to get back into action. Do you want to connect? Reply to this post and let’s see what we can do together!

Why Engage In Anything?—A Tip Sheet by Adam Fletcher

Personal Engagement is the sustained connection a person has to the world within themselves.
—Adam F. C. Fletcher

I’ve written pretty extensively here about the ways we’re engaged, what we’re engaged in, and how we engage throughout our lives. I define engagement as any sustainable connection in our lives, within or around us.

Today I’m going to write about the roots of engagement, or why we become engaged. Talking recently with a colleague, she asked what to do about the weak spots in our engagements. I explained that there really are no “weak” spots in engagement. I mean, really, when there’s something that I want to be sustainably, richly engaged in, I do that. That is the same with everyone, whether or not we’re conscious of that.

We don’t often think about what we’re engaging in before or while we’re engaged in it. Instead, its often in reflection that we look back and make the connection – “Hey, I was engaged in that!”

“Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.”
—Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Sinking Deep In

I am discovering that engagement largely happens with those things that are deep enough to sink into, as opposed to the immediate choices we simply choose in the moment. If I can choose in an instant, I may not be truly capable of engaging in it.

If the same is true for you, you may not be capable of engaging in sudden things, like a fast food meal, a grocery store aisle conversation, or singing a song around the campfire, especially if those are spur of the moment choices that mean little and have little impact on your longer life. If, however, you feel deeply about those things, consider them with meaning and purpose, and connect them to your longer arch of life, happiness, and purpose, then you may be able to engage in them.

Ultimately, this is the tie-around with the rest of our lives: When we learn to think about it, we often expect ourselves to engage in an instant, in every moment of activity we experience. Understanding what we do with this post though, maybe we should reconsider this: Instead of making every moment engaging, we should allow ourselves to simply live in them. Along then way, we can strive to establish deeper, richer connections through learning, living, loving, and growing, and ultimately can eschew momentary blips of connectivity in order to foster lifelong engagement within ourselves and throughout the world around us.

3 Reasons to Engage in Anything

Hope. When Dr. King’s team stood in circle to reflect and pray after their civil rights activism, every they’d finish with by stacking their hands in the middle of the circle, and they’d chant “Keep Hope ALIVE!” It was a not-so-subtle reminder that hopefulness is driven by engagement.
Truth. At the heart of all our commitments, possibilities, actions and abilities is engagement. Since engagement is the sustained connection we experience to the worlds within and around ourselves, its the truth at the core of our realities. If we stopped engaging in the world around us and within us, we’d cease to exist!
Justice. Engagement is the ultimate form of justice, whether we’re engaging in ourselves or in the world around us. It is justice because, ultimately, we are the only people in charge of our engagement. We are the controllers of the deepest parts of our engagements who nobody, anywhere can harm or take away from. Engagement brings justice because it allows us to connect most deeply, truly, hopefully and sustainably.

Learning to release the tension, pressure, or stress of the daily choices we make might help us hold the engagements we do have in longer, wider, and deeper ways more clearly within our hearts and minds and throughout our lives. Maybe.