Context And Feedback

“The models were wrong.” “No one saw this coming.” “It’s all so clear now what was happening.” “This person was right, we should have listened to them.” These are the exclamations swirling around all of us right now. They’re a stretch for certainty, confidence, and comfort in a time that lacks all three.

The opportunity after a shock is in helping people reorganize their understanding of what happened, what to do now, and where they are going. It’s not an entirely rational process. People will start connecting dots from all sorts of disparate places. Our goal is to be a positive filter, sifting out the bad and being a force for progress.

Certainty is an illusion but probabilities are our friend. There is always a range of potential outcomes. Confidence is required to take action and it takes communication to build. Comfort is fleeting unless we have successfully combined accepting a range of possibilities and given ourselves permission to act and be wrong. Again, communication with ourselves and those around us is critical.

We can add value through the continuous education of our clients. Not because we are smarter than them or they need to seek us out as teachers, but because when things get extra confusing extra quickly, we can help refocus them on their own priorities and get back on the path. At our best, we help to figure these things out in context and provide quality feedback.