Number 51 of 52 Lifelong Communication Lessons: No expectations
December 21, 2015
I first met Xenia met 20 years ago. As the five year old daughter of my hairdresser, running around the salon, she captivated the clientele with her presence. I had no idea how much our lives would intersect and connect over the next two decades. As she grew up, I would see her sporadically and hear about her talents from her Mom. She is one of those people often described as an old soul. Wisdom and calmness beyond her years. You could just feel it with her.
At 19, she came to work with me part time. It was a perfect match. I was not keen to train someone for communication work and she was not interested in my field. She was attending university with long range plans and visions of a Masters degree. Her courses focused on geography, the environment and other noteworthy and worthwhile ventures, such as urban planning. She wanted work that was flexible and I could easily structure my workshops to accommodate. I wanted support and she delivered. There were no unrealistic expectations and it made life easy.
As her graduation neared, we started talking about the future. Xenia was realizing the part of planning she found most interesting was public participation. She was also seeing the power and impact of good dialogue. Our facilitation work was evolving more toward stakeholder discussions and we could see how the two were compatible. At first blush, I was a bit reluctant. Public consultation conjured up visions of pissy town hall meetings that made me shudder. I had seen enough BS processes where organizations were just ticking off the box to say they consulted but did not. I could see people's lack of trust or understanding of issues sending discussions sideways, costing way too much in time and money. Xenia had the same concerns. Organizations had to commit to listen, be willing to make changes and be upfront about what would and would not happen. We were seeing strong results in our consultation work. Xenia applied her academic learning and IAP2 (International Association of Public Participation) training to our combined years of practical experience. We started to see how our future together might unfold.
All of our work, media training, presentation training, social media workshops and non-traditional facilitating, would come together in this arena. We also love how technology plays a part in creating better, wider spread consultation. We were getting under the surface of some gritty issues and it was having an impact.
We could see how public expectations were changing and becoming more sophisticated. We knew the old ways were no longer acceptable. Traditional public and private sector consultations were faltering. We attend meetings where groups lament the challenges of having meaningful dialogue and getting the people in power to truly play ball. We also see people become entrenched and not willing to change their perspectives, even slightly.
All this to say, we find ourselves, at this stage, doing work we both love. We are evolving our business strategies to accommodate our fundamental belief in the power of quality engagement to generate positive results.
Part of our strategy has included the formation of a new company to compliment the work of Q Workshops called XetQ - X for Xenia, et (the French word for and) and Q for Q Workshops. We love the way the name sounds like "execute" as really great consultation is all about the execution. Aside from having a focus on the stakeholder engagement type work, the new company will ultimately belong to Xenia. We felt it was a good longer term strategy for Xenia to have the ability to own this business and for me to be able to carry on with Q Workshops indefinitely. Win, win.
We now have great expectations for our work and our futures.
Just one communication lesson for this year end blog - Embrace serendipity. You never know what great things can unfold in this wonderful life.
Seasons best to all our wonderful clients, business friends and supporters. You make our work possible by having integrity and valuing real discussions. As one of our clients recently said, "To be leaders we must be comfortable with being uncomfortable."
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