The other day Toad – who is nine – expressed genuine angst to me that he had not yet identified his life purpose. He was very unsatisfied with my response indicating that he was only nine and didn’t need to know his life purpose yet or that lots of grownups (including me) cannot always articulate their life purpose. This led us into a deep conversation about choices, natural gifts and expanding the tools in your toolkit.

Toad and I share the natural gifts of being planners, problem solvers, and thinkers. Since he was wee, one of our family sayings has been “Don’t panic – think it through!” Our conversation about building additional tools to be used with our gifts used the example of trying to fix a broken mailbox with a hammer when you need a screwdriver. We also talked about the risk of not investing in new tools – risks to yourself and to the relationships in your life.

These were really big conversations and especially challenging when one of the participants has a much more limited worldview and experience set to draw upon. Wait what? A difficult conversation with 2 people who have different knowledge, experience, and positional power…….. Sound at all familiar? These types of conversations happen all the time in business and in projects. When they happen do you think of them as opportunities to grow and shape both people and the relationship? If you thought about these conversations differently would the conversations you have be different?

Please leave me a comment to let me know what your most valuable tool is in your toolkit. You can also reach Tree Toad Consulting at www.treetoadconsulting.com