I was attempting to give someone directions over the phone recently. We had three attempts at it but weren’t making progress.
By now, we realized that we didn’t have a shared understanding of their starting point.
As I was on the verge of giving up, my wife decided it was time for a different strategy – she asked them to head to a place they were familiar with so we could start all over again.
And, voila! The reset worked and the directions worked great.
The first step to giving good driving directions is understanding where the recipients of our directions are. Only once we understand that can we help them with where they want/need to go.
That principle, it turns out, applies just as well to our attempts to drive/inspire change.
