There are many ways to help people. One approach is to share strategies that can help them to achieve success.
Different people share strategies in different ways. They may act as mentors, coaches, teachers, counsellors, writers, inventors, leaders or whatever. This article explores how you can study and share such strategies in your own way.
Imagine you want to share knowledge about a particular topic. It is useful: a) To choose a topic you feel passionately about; b) To choose one in which you also have a track record of delivering positive results.
Different people will obviously choose different topics. They may focus on helping people to learn certain skills, do satisfying work, tackle particular challenges or whatever.
If you wish, try tackling the exercise on this theme. This invites you to do the following things.
Describe the specific topic about which you would like to share strategies that can help people to achieve success.
If appropriate, write this in ‘How to …’ terms. For example: How to stay healthy, how to manage their finances, how to shape their future career, how to overcome setbacks or whatever.
Describe the specific reasons why you would like to share strategies that can help people to achieve success in this particular area.
Imagine that you have chosen to focus on a specific topic. How can you identify the strategies that people follow in this area to achieve success? One approach is to study what works.
This is a step I was helped to take during my early career. After running therapeutic communities for young people, in 1974 I was asked to share this knowledge. Social workers in Scandinavia were interested in how to run such communities.
They invited me to share lessons from the programmes. Certainly I had ideas about what worked, but it also made sense to study other successful therapeutic communities.
What did such programmes do right? What were the strategies they followed? How could others use these strategies to help young people to develop?
Looking around the world, there were many models that people followed. The programmes that were most relevant, however, often pursued the following strategies.
They created a positive culture in which motivated people could develop.
They provided practical tools that enabled people to work towards achieving their life goals.
They only worked with motivated people who were prepared to take responsibility, encourage others and follow the community guidelines.
If people chose to break the guidelines they were choosing to leave the community.
Bearing these themes in mind, I created a two-day course that could be delivered to people interested in running such therapeutic communities. This involved bringing the strategies to life and, where appropriate, enabling the participants to follow these in their own ways.
Different people have different approaches to studying success in their chosen field. They may study what works for people to stay healthy, lead teams, provide medical care, manage crises, solve particular problems or whatever.
If you wish, try tackling the exercise on this theme. This invites you to do the following things.
Describe the specific topic about which you would like to share strategies that can help people to achieve success.
Describe the specific things you can do to study strategies for achieving success in this particular area.
Imagine that you have clarified the strategies that work in a particular field. How can you share these in a way that helps people to succeed?
Different people choose different vehicles for making this happen. They may choose to mentor, coach, teach, lead teams, write, create websites or use other vehicles.
Whichever method you choose, it can be useful to remember the principles follow by many good educators. They aim to make the learning personal, practical and profitable.
Personal – It must relate to the person and their goals
Practical – It must be practical and provide tools that help the person to reach their goals.
Profitable – It must be, in the widest sense, profitable and help the person to achieve their goals.
Bearing these factors in mind, it can be useful to explore the following questions.
Who are the people I want to reach with the information? What are the challenges they face? What is their picture of success?
What is the knowledge I can share to help them to reach their goals? How can I share this in a way that resonates with them? How can I enable people to apply the strategies in their own ways and achieve success?
If you wish, try tackling the final exercise on this theme. This invites you to do the following things.
Describe the specific topic about which you would like to share strategies that can help people to achieve success.
Describe the specific things you can do to share the strategies for achieving success in this particular area.
Describe the specific benefits of sharing the strategies for achieving success in this particular area.
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