So your seminar leader wanted you each to tell a story as part of your self-introduction. That's a good opportunity to listen.
I was once invited to a business dinner where the topic was the power of stories [1]. Our host asked us to each tell a story that impacted our work. I told story about my collaboration book project that had the working title "Collaborate or Perish".[2] I first wrote about this in the International Civil Society journal in October 2012, following my Rockefeller Fellowship in Bellagio, Italy. [3] Then I found that William Bratton, the ex-police chief of NYC published a book with the same title.[4] The title was already taken!
But my fortune was about to change. In Nov. 2012 we had a NetHope Summit in Seattle and a dinner at FareStart,[5] the restaurant that trains homeless people to be food service workers. The speaker for the dinner was Melissa Waggener founder and CEO of the marketing communications firm Waggener-Edstrom. [6] Melissa talked about what she had seen at NetHope: that NetHope "just works". We all nodded and were proud. She went on to say, because "we are better together"! There was my new title. How appropriate in that setting of nonprofits, corporate partners and a workforce readiness program that works.
What I learned was that listening and being open to the conversation brings the solution. |