Encourage Others to Make a Difference
It’s a wonderful thing to go out in the world and make a contribution, to create something, to produce something that matters .
It’s just as important and maybe more so that we help others do the same.
If you think of your work as a contribution—great or small — then you can say you’ve made x amount of difference in making your organization—or maybe even the world—a better place. If you help 5 or 10 people make their contributions, you can say you’ve made perhaps 5x or 10x the amount of difference, And if, in doing so, you teach others to help other people create and produce and make contributions, you’ve just added an exponent to your contribution. Do the math to see the impact potential. X squared, X to the power of 3 or 10 or whatever the number might be. OK, math isn’t my strong suit, but you can see the point: the amount of difference made at work or in the world not only multiplies, but keeps on multiplying beyond you.
Unfortunately, many people seem to have a problem with this concept. Instead, they spend their time tearing people down and intentionally getting in their way. They’re even jealous when someone else achieves an important goal or has any kind of success.
It’s important to break free of petty jealousy and meanness. When you learn to be happy for others—and count their success as an extension of yours if you’ve helped them out along the way—you’ll notice a big change in the culture of your workgroup or maybe even of the entire organization if the exponential factor is in place.
This is why coaching is so important. It sets the stage for exponential personal growth, individual performance, and a healthy organizational culture.
You don’t need some kind of “certification” in order to coach. You need the desire to help others and the willingness to invest time and energy to do it.
The results can end up impacting people who you may never meet. But you’ll know who they are because you’ll recognize a part of you in what they do and how they do it.
Who can you coach, even in some small way, in order to begin making a difference?