Attending the Private Practice Section's Annual Meeting last week raised some interesting questions I hadn't considered since my doctoral studies. Important questions that upon reflection it seems I too often glaze over:
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Can we really ever get/make/inspire someone or some organization to change?
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Or do we merely create environments of safety, challenge and opportunity to allow change/creativity to emerge rather than be held back?
To my way of thinking right now it seems all too easy to make objects out of people and have them be objects to which we do things to in order to generate preplanned outcomes…much as we do with a widget coming down the assembly line. While you can coerce certain individuals to behave in some manner, the motivational literature suggests that isn't a sustainable model.
These questions reminded me of the difference between education (educare: to draw out) vs instruction/teaching (to put in) … One has a collaborative sense to it, the other a dominating or "over thou" mentality. Instructing information and skills is fairly easy, being and educator that can provide a learning environment that permits the student to examine their assumptions and test new ones requires a whole other skill set, and I believe a deep personal practice of awareness of the educator's agenda first. If it includes being the doer/the fixer/ or the healer….ohhhhh, I don't know.
What set off this line of thinking was when my son Adam commented on FB that he was sure "You really got them thinking." …which is true I suspect many had something to consider and contemplate. But not so much by what I said as the environment I created. My response to my very wise son, an educator himself, was, "What I learned Adam was that it's most important that people have the chance to "feel/sense" again…once you create that space, then their thinking shifts and they access the wisdom they were looking for outside themselves….very important lesson for me."
So what do you think…where does the inspiration or motivation come from?
Can you make someone inspired? ….I don't think so, but wonder what you think? And if you think you can, I want to hear how you think that might occur? ….great stuff…I've been studying it since 1978….still don't have the answers but lots of good questions.
