Finding our way

You know what I love most in the world?

Moving to a new city and being so immersed in the feelings and sensations of lost. With new surprises around ever corner, even the smallest of journeys are filled with treasure troves of adventure. But it’s challenging walking with a map, especially when you’re keen to just get where you have to go. More than a few times, I’ve looked up just in time, the person that I almost ran into scowling at me in disappointment or the zooming car alerting me with a long held screaming hoooonk. And if you’re a no map kind of person, well then you better be a no time kind of person too. I’m all for aimless wandering but the reality is my life of travelling has been much more business than pleasure.

Most of the times (and there’s been many) I’ve moved to a new city, its been for work and the luxury of time is not on my side. I need to know my way fast and often large teams of people have depended on me getting it right so that I’m on time for them.
The very best thing, is the day you wake up and head off, realising you have learnt your way, you have become part of the fabric of that town and you now know where you are going, the fastest way there and even a few favourable detours with delightful little coffee shops along the way.

When I moved to NYC 15 years ago to open a Greenpeace office, my employer send a guide to spend two weeks with me, teaching me the subway, showing me around town, the best places to eat, how to order my coffee (apparently long black in America means something very different, who knew?!) helping hire staff and navigate the vortex of USA employment practices, making everything easy so I could know my way fast and hit the ground running. Jack, who is also one of those all round fabulous humans made things 100 times smoother. He took the overwhelm away from the situation (I was 23 and aside from New Zealand, had never left Australia, at this stage) and whenever fear or uncertainty rose, he seemed to just gently be edging me forward. This was the one and only time I had a guide in this way in my whole career and I whole heartedly know it made a huge difference.

You don’t have to move to a new city to understand what I’m talking about here. Every new role or job we take throughout our career, can mirror a similar experience. It can take a long time to really settle in, get familiar with systems, process, people, expectations and even to find a decent coffee locally. In the not for profit space, we are often expected to be a jack of all trades. Its not uncommon for us to be promoted or given roles because of our technical expertise only to discover we now need to figure out how to manage staff, recruit volunteers, engage with community, acquire donors. Often we can find ourselves in a new role and suddenly needing to level up into new skill sets, fast in order to ensure our success.
We want to impress fast and bring something new to the team. We aspire for resilience through the immersion of newness and at times long nostalgically for the familiar. In the corporate space, it is not uncommon for people at this point to hire themselves a coach, a guide to help you through those initial stages. To get you focused on whats important, to help ensure your resilience and that you are able to put your best foot forward fast. Why is it less common in the not for profit space? In my experience it’s just as vital, if not more so, considering all we have at stake. I think we are getting there, we finally have a clear acceptance of a coaching style of management being much more successful approach to getting the best out of people and we are learning the power of coaches more broadly as a society. and My experience is that this understanding (and the result thereof) are now trickling their way into our sector. I look forward to the day when its common place for not for profit people to hire coaches to support them in their careers, I look forward to the day we have found our way and emerge from the overwhelm to discover their is help there for us too, that we can have resilience in this sector and huge flourishing careers and that we do not have to go it alone.  Also, if anyone is keen to start a new city coach industry for expats, I think it could be a profitable niche!