Do you sometimes wish that you could have a doctor or therapist who understood some of the frustrating parts of working with a team or with clients and could help you learn to approach things better? Better meetings, better conversations, better outcomes?
Let me introduce you to Alan Kay at the Glasgow Group
Alan lives by Seth Godin's principal that we should give our best work, our art, away for free, as a gift to others, every day. He has challenged and influenced my own thinking and helped me to be able to give away more of what I have to share with others.
After several months of following Alan via Twitter, it feels like I've had my own personal life-coach teaching me all about an approach called Solution Focus (SF). SF for organizations is based on asking better questions that focus not on problems and roadblocks, but on what is working in any given situation and building on those successes.
The "gold" is not in the 144 character tweets themselves...it's in the links to Alan's Youtube channel which contains all kinds of short videos with ideas of how to apply SF to any number of situations. Alan also keeps a blog with many of the same ideas from his work AND THE BEST PART is that there are a number of excellent cheat sheets that can be downloaded for free.
I think we all want to be better at working with others and I want to thank Alan for his virtual mentorship over the past year and for sharing so much of his wisdom as a free gift to me. I encourage you to check out a few of the videos or tip sheets and perhaps you will find his coaching as inspiring as I have.
ASK BETTER, GIVE SMARTER?
Giving is very much about asking better questions and listening more carefully, both for the fundraiser and for the donor - and isn't philanthropy, at its heart, about creating better outcomes?
I think Alan's work can be helpful for anyone participating in a charitable relationship because, to some extent, it's about all parties involved working to imagine together how our world could be a better place based on the good work that has happened so far.
(I will disclose that the only consideration I've received from Alan was a free copy of his e-book this fall and that this review is unsolicited by him.)