Chapter 9
1. Every great design was made great because there was a design team that brought that project, product, or building to life. Designers believe in radical collaboration because true genius is a collaborative process. We design our lives in collaboration and connection with others, because weis always stronger than I- it’s as simple as that.
- Why is this true? Why is this hard at times?
2. Everyone participating in your life design effort in one way or another should be thought of as being a part of your team, but there are different roles to be played, and it’s useful to name them.
Supporters -
Players -
Intimates -
The Team -
- Briefly review the role of each, along with examples in your life.
3. That last part - the conversation - is the most important. As far as rules go, we use just four in our Stanford teams. Keep it:
1. Respectful
2. Confidential
3. Participative (no holding back)
4. Generative (constructive, not skeptical or judging)
- Again, provide examples demonstrating the value of each.
4. Your life design effort will be greatly enhanced if you’ve got a few mentors participating with you. We make a clear distinction between counsel and advice. “Counsel” is when someone is trying to help you figure out what you think. “Advice” is when someone is telling you what he or she thinks.
- Provide a situation where each has worked well; and has backfired.
5. Mentors can make a particularly valuable contribution to your discernment process when it’s time to make choices. Important decisions are seldom easy, and there are lots of competing issues and trade-off considerations that conspire to make it awfully noisy in your head. The mentor can listen to you dump out all the stuff going on inside you and help you to make sense of it all, sorting it into the big stuff, the small stuff, and the irrelevant stuff.
- Who serves as this type of mentor for you? Why is it effective?
6. Now, you’re probably wondering where you are going to find all these great mentors. We suggest that there are many more people capable of giving good mentoring than there are good mentors...all you really need are mentor-capable people from whom you can extract a mentor contribution. You just have to be the initiator. Specifically, ask him not so much to tell you what he’d do as to use his insights and experience to try to help you sort out your own thinking.
- Where has this approach proved useful to you as a mentee?
- Where have you served as a mentor in this capacity?
7. To find a “community” as we intend it, you’re looking for a group of people that shares most of the following attributes:
Kindred purpose -
Meets regularly -
Shared ground -
To know and be known -
- Review these attributes and share how each has benefitted you.
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