Context

What you see in the photo above is quite a stark contrast to the audiences I’ve been speaking to over the past month or so. This is not a huge auditorium, there’s no projector screens, no concierge, no professional lighting… And I absolutely love it!

That’s not to say I don’t absolutely love the larger events too (perhaps this is just me saying I love my job) but I have really enjoyed the way these two settings are juxtaposed with one another.

Getting the chance to sit with an intimate group of school teachers multiple times over the past two weeks has provided a bit of perspective that has been incredibly valuable to me and this perspective is the main point that I wanted to cover in my words today.

A consistent motif that I’ve used in my presentations has been the inevitable question of “What advice would you give to a younger you?”. I’ve found that answering this question can open the door to quite a few ideas and pieces of advice that I think would be valuable but I also find that the answer can sometimes change depending on what group I’m speaking to.

Context matters and despite how universal some parts of my story are, I always find that the real connection comes through understanding the angle that someone else would approach that same question from. Which in this case, is teachers.

This is significant because a teacher essentially has the opportunity every single day to make an impact on a child’s life and that is really is the embodiment of the question “What advice would you give to a younger you?”. It may not specifically be the exact version of a younger them that they are speaking to but the principle remains the same, how will you use your knowledge and expertise in service of someone else?

I don’t intend on going into depth of how I answered this question exactly as I did in these presentations but the lesson for me and the purpose for writing this goes back to the quote I covered earlier this week “Seek first to understand before being understood”. It’s honestly such an important way of looking at a lot of the things I do in life, especially my speaking. How can I expect people to connect and take away the parts of my story that I think have impact if they don’t feel I care about them and their own circumstances?

Context matters, and every single group that I speak to regardless of the size, scale and setting will probably approach the notion of giving advice to a younger version of themselves differently. I’ve always made sure that I try to understand the group I’m talking to but these past few instances have really shown the importance of that in a very tangible way.

So what’s the lesson here?

I think to really take on the idea of what I’m talking about it does come back to empathy but in order to land in the right place it does pay to stop for a moment and consider context. There are very few things in life that fit all sizes, so I suggest to take some time to ask what is different about this next ‘thing' that you’re doing, and use that to figure out how you can adjust and frame it differently. This isn’t even about going the extra mile, it’s just the bare minimum that you can do to connect, and there’s value in that for everyone.

Bonus insight: For those of you who are curious, the advice I would give young Brett would NOT be “Don’t go surfing on March 30th, 2016.”