If you were a book, would you read it?

A while ago, someone approached me with regards to the opportunity they saw in me supporting their client in a sort of consultant capacity.
I’ve answered that I don’t do consultancy on engineering or technical management, one reason being that I consider projects and solutions to be too specific and subjective altogether, that is an error to ask some external and detached person to have a say in such matters. Well, except for when an expert is hired for mid to long term on a project, in which case the “consultant” persona kind of wears-out.

Whoever is in charge of it now (I’ve continued), shall be empowered to own it and rather seek methods of growing their personal resilience. Looking at ways of possibly developing their interpersonal skills, as well as their self-esteem, may turn out to be the very miracle everyone was looking for.
Because, as experience shows, it’s rarely the knowledge base that is the problem, if ever. In fact, what most people are lacking is their awareness and skill to see the value in themselves and leverage it. 

As an employee, one may very well think of all the issues, in all the right ways, have all the key questions on the tip of their tongue, but simply fail to express it due to their lack of confidence.
It’s precisely because I’ve walked on that edge, so many times, at the limit between keeping it going and falling-off, that I’ve grown to understand that feeding resources into a process is the best way to sort out problems, rather than swapping the problem owner altogether. 

Helping people by giving them the strength to cope with challenges at hand, is the sustainable way of delivering the work of individuals, teams and companies.
As an example, when kids are misusing words or simply not pronouncing them correctly, you don’t bring someone else to do the speaking for them. You show them where they are not as good as expected and help them through the process of getting it right.

For a while now, companies rushed at giving the impression that they understood this, by putting in place a small variety of internal programs meant to bring personal development at work, to give, in some ways, the sense of belonging, the sentiment of being taken care of, the thought that one matters.
However, offering a mind lift, a confidence boost to a selected few of their employees will not provide for everyone’s needs and it’s every one that needs to be considered. For a team is as resilient as the weakest of its members and no matter how confident a team leader may become, on the long term, the team will perform relative to the average esteem level that its members measure up to as a whole.

At the same time, one may very well agree that it’s only so much a company can do to address such a challenge. I mean, a problem it’s rarely owned by one entity, but rather shared by many. And this one is no different.
After all, it’s not like the companies kept us through schools and trainings all of our life time. As individuals, we came, in a way, ready made, self- or otherwise prepared. We used to take care of our selves, contributing to our own becoming, long before anyone else considered doing it for us. In fact, it used to be the only way we knew about how to better and strengthen ourselves, about how to move ourselves forward.

And though it might feel like you’ve lost the habit of it all, not knowing where to start anew, at the end of the day you’ve got to recognize that it’s all part of your own story, a tale no one else can do a better job at writing but yourself.

I’ll leave you with some possible starting points.

• Picture yourself learning something of your own choice! What would that be? And why?
• Think about teaching something of your own making! What impact would it have in your world?
• If you were a book, who would read it?