Why Development Is Different
Development is movement, but it's different than other kinds of movement. It’s not about achieving goals, or growing, or improving, although all of those things will happen. Development is about shape. It is attention to a context’s shape and then shaping yourself appropriately into that context. It is relational. Be it calling, marriage, or leadership; development is a dance where the vision of the context leads you as you add your own pizazz to the steps. Or in my case, lack of pizazz.
While many programs turn development into a step-by-step color-by-number process, it is really more like impressionist art. The scenery that needs to be captured is before you, but you get to paint it according to your perspective.
Development is more jazz than classical music and more poetry than a research paper. No wonder whenever we try to concretize the process, we come up short or eventually break it. A static process for development works, until it doesn’t. If there were a one-size-fits-all model for this, surely we would have stumbled upon it by now, but the number of self-help books and consulting firms out there promising to improve you continues to increase.
I’ve spent 20 years training men and women of all ages from the complicated process of insurance billing to replacing parts on machines. And the number one ingredient I’ve learned for healthy development? Attention.
You have to pay attention to the vision and the vision has to be making room for your unique presence. When attention stops, the relationship starts falling apart, and development ceases.
It’s always complicated, always hard, always challenging, and never boring … if you’re doing it right. Why else would we honor a 30 year marriage or a 25 year CEO? Because the process to get to that point requires constant attention, humility of perspective, and yes, a willingness to develop.
What is development? It’s change, appropriate for you and appropriate to the context you are in. It’s an equation that can not be solved with a static algorithm but will, in the process of working on it, produce the math that can send you to the moon.
While many programs turn development into a step-by-step color-by-number process, it is really more like impressionist art. The scenery that needs to be captured is before you, but you get to paint it according to your perspective.
Development is more jazz than classical music and more poetry than a research paper. No wonder whenever we try to concretize the process, we come up short or eventually break it. A static process for development works, until it doesn’t. If there were a one-size-fits-all model for this, surely we would have stumbled upon it by now, but the number of self-help books and consulting firms out there promising to improve you continues to increase.
I’ve spent 20 years training men and women of all ages from the complicated process of insurance billing to replacing parts on machines. And the number one ingredient I’ve learned for healthy development? Attention.
You have to pay attention to the vision and the vision has to be making room for your unique presence. When attention stops, the relationship starts falling apart, and development ceases.
It’s always complicated, always hard, always challenging, and never boring … if you’re doing it right. Why else would we honor a 30 year marriage or a 25 year CEO? Because the process to get to that point requires constant attention, humility of perspective, and yes, a willingness to develop.
What is development? It’s change, appropriate for you and appropriate to the context you are in. It’s an equation that can not be solved with a static algorithm but will, in the process of working on it, produce the math that can send you to the moon.
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