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At a party recently I met a young man who asked me what I did. I told him that I worked around the globe with senior executives helping them grow in terms of wisdom, character and judgment and how to use their learning to lead their organisations and communities to new levels of success and well-being. "So you're in human resources," he declared. I wasn't too happy with being stuffed into a box labelled in such a way. I work with people, not human resources. After several attempts to relocate me in other boxes the young man lost interest and walked away.
I can't say that I was displeased. He had earlier told me that he ran a website that reinsured compulsive gamblers. His website provided gamblers with the opportunity to gamble against the odds of success of their own gambling. He was an American MBA and knew all about human resource management - or so he told me. Actually he projected the image that he knew all about most things.
Reflecting on this interaction I realised how limiting the "What do you do?" question is. In a society which values money, money and ... money, the "What do you do?" question is really about locating people in the financial pecking order. The question really reads, “Is this person financially successful?, Powerful?, Useful to me and therefore worth knowing?”
I have decided that a more useful question to ask is "What contribution are you making to society?" The underlying theme is whether this person is of substance, caring, responsible? Is this person a contributing member of society?
As I write this article I am preparing to address a conference for Volunteers Australia. This is an organisation that supports those who give freely of their time and services to make our society a better place. The "What do you do?" question to many of these people would receive a "I'm retired" or "I am unemployed" or "I'm a mother" answer. The "What contribution are you making to society?" question would elicit a whole raft of interesting information and stories that would show you that this retired, unemployed, home-based person - who society often overlooks - is in a fact someone of great substance and merit.
I could be labelled a speaker, a mentor and the chairman of a company that runs strategically based corporate transformations. I often think, however, that the contributions I make to society come through my volunteer work with young people, community groups and as a writer. I get paid to enrich companies, I gain my personal fulfilment through enriching people's lives and building community. Someone asking me the "What do you do for a living?" question would never discover all that.
If we take the agenda off what we do and put it on how we contribute, we can regain our dignity and self-respect from knowing that we make a difference. We can support each other in doing this by acknowledging that we are all more than a label or a job description. By asking "How do you contribute?" we can help to change the agenda in a way that works for individuals, society and humanity.
What ‘Relationship’ is between two people, ‘Community’ is to a group of people. In the same way that Relationship is vital for effective Strategy and Leadership, Community is vital for our society to function. Recasting the agenda to valuing contribution to community and not just valuing what we can take from our community is one way everyone can make a difference!
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