We Matter

We Matter

Each and every one of us matters.

That principle must lead all human deliberations, decisions and actions as individuals and members of society.

Each of us must listen with open ears and minds, committed to understanding each other at all times and in all things in order to stay true to that principle.

Some of in society, perhaps more than others, by virtue of choice of career or vocation, have a particular interest in following this principle.  This is because their careers and vocations are defined by the drive to improve the lives of  fellow citizens, fellow human beings.

Nowhere is this more evident than with those serving through not-for-profit, health charity and government organizations.  The sole purpose of these organizations is the betterment of the lives of individuals and  the betterment of society by bettering lives.

In fact the same must be said about all people serving in any sort of leadership position.  The highest purpose of leadership is betterment of the lives of those being led.

What does this commitment mean?

People leading initiatives to improve the lives of fellow human beings must then reflect that each and every one of us matter in the style and manner of their leadership.  We being served must understand from our own observations that we matter to the leaders.  We know we matter when we know we are listened to and heard with understanding.

How will we people know we are being heard?

First of all, the people leading the initiative must ask us what our aspirations and frustrations are, what our comforts and fears are.  Then our leaders must restate our statements in their own words and check back with us, telling us what they have understood by telling us their statements and asking us if agree with that understanding.  The leaders will reassure us that our original statements in our own words will be saved, archived, to be referred to when needed.

In the discussions between leaders and us, both parties need to explicitly state that while we are working together addressing the issue exactly as expressed and understood, both they and we will learn new things as the process of addressing the issues unfolds, perhaps even because of addressing the issues.  That may cause the goal of the improvement initiative to change.  Recognizing this, we and the leaders must agree to maintain communication throughout to ensure we are true collaborators in our effort.

To enable this collaboration and continuous learning, we must maintain an open and accessible archive so both the leaders and we can be as up to date as possible on the development process.  We must maintain a record of all actions and  communications undertaken with third parties who may be required to enable the improvement process.  What are those third parties suggesting?  What are they doing?  How are each we and the leaders involved and engaged in these actions?  How does the enabling action work?  If it is seen to be not capable of fully delivering the desired outcome, why not?  What might be done to achieve the desired outcome?  What are the costs in time, resources and money to make the attempt?  Might alternative actions achieve the desired outcome?

The details of data collection and record keeping become important, including use of language commonly understandable to all interested parties.  Data collection is ideally an on-going “real time” process.  That may not be achievable because of resource constraints, but care must be taken to remain current.

When collecting data, particularly by asking questions, it is critical to not lock people into the box of the questioner’s mind.  The questions must be as open-ended as possible to ensure we are speaking our minds without having our thoughts filtered by someone else’s mind.  The questioning might start with something as open-ended as, “Please try to not think of services I (the questioner) or the organization I work with have to offer.  Please think of absolutely anything that comes to mind.  Okay?  Here are the questions.
What is going well in your life?
What is not going well in your life?
What is okay but could be better?”

Those questions might lead to very specific or very general or vague answers, but they can be used to begin dialogue.  The details of any given issue will be drawn out through this dialogue.  Always remember we must lead the dialogue.  The questioners will always encourage continual dialogue but not lead the dialogue.

If possible, the questioners should work within a questioning-group or research group to help develop understanding of the responses and to help carry the dialogue along.  The group will be able to help its members remember to remain true to the message heard from us.

This is especially important where the group or questioning organization is a service provider to the people.  Service personnel tend to do their very best to meet the clients’ needs and individual personnel can feel hurt or take responses as negative criticisms of their ability or motivation.  The group can be there to guard against misunderstanding of the issue due to defensiveness on the part of caring personnel.  The group can also support service personnel to prevent them from becoming discouraged.  In fact, the information being gathered will serve as intelligence critical to organizational and service personnel effectiveness.

Research group work is also critically important where the goal is to come up with service policy around which to build programs to meet our needs.  For policies to be relevant and effective, they must meet needs common to individuals and subgroups, or all of us.  That takes broad perspective enabled by many perspectives brought by each of the members of the research group.  The group members can encourage each other to stick with this difficult work, taking no short cuts which could easily disable the entire process and make a mock of everyone’s participation.

We all need to remember there is no greater waste of resources than ineffectiveness.

Conclusion
This can be the most rewarding work any advocate or advocacy group or indeed any service person can do.

All enabling third party providers will thank service provider leaders for directing their attention to exactly those issues important to each of us being served.  The providers’ work on our behalf will save third parties tons of time and other resources and greatly enhance their effectiveness by focussing exactly on our stated needs.

We whose needs are being met will, of course, be the most rewarded by this work.  We will know we matter and are not reduced to simply being numbers or test subjects in some system.  We know we are respected as individuals. We know our self-defined quality of life is improved through the effort shared between those who serve and ourselves.

Lastly and equally importantly, service providers and their leaders will themselves realize the reward that comes from doing the most effective job possible at improving the quality of life of those they serve, thereby improving the level of satisfaction throughout society.

Finally, each and every one of us knows that we, each of us server and served alike, do indeed matter.

Mike Klein