Please take time to acknowledge the connections in your life. First people feel good when acknowleged, and second, you may learn something from joining the dots.
A few years ago one of the “superconnectors” in my world, Sandy Kennedy, introduced me to a brilliant and energetic entrepreneur, Andrew Barrie. Andrew had the idea of acknowledging connections down a chain, one output of this being that people could then be recognised for value they had provided to others through making connections. I just looked Andrew up and saw that the app that has emerged from that initial thought, Community Lab is near to launch. I look forward to seeing what emerges!
Why did I think of that conversation today? Well, I just had a quite wonderful first conversation with Katie Elliott of Little Challenges, who will be a future guest on WhatComesNextLive. In getting to know each other at the start of the call, I followed a practice I’ve often used since that first meeting with Andrew Barrie and tracked back introductions to the source. For how Katie and I connected it traced back like this:
- I contacted Katie to be a guest on my show (hence our conversation) after seeing a LI post and then joining an event and hearing her host Rob Poynton (a prior guest already) on a recent Little Gathering (a wonderful format of a little bit of podcast, a little bit of group interaction), reminiscent to me of a Tortoise Thinkin.
- I met Rob Poynton when he facilitated a two-day residential event called Basecamp London in November 2019, an event at which I also met Alex Barker and Steve Chapman (and yes, have had them both on my show too, so that Basecamp event has been a rich source of connections for me!
- I went to that event as my friend Kay Scorah (yes, another show guest!) was attending as a group facilitator and leader and I went along on short notice.
- I met Kay Scorah in mid-2018 after attending Modern Elder Academy (MEA) in Baja, Mexico as Kay lives in London (and is, btw, on the faculty) and I had asked who in the MEA “tribe” was based in London
- I had gone to MEA as a guest of Chip Conley, having written about one of his books in December 2017 (Emotional Equations) and then tagged him on twitter, out of which we had a call a week later from which I then quickly booked a trip to Mexico.
So, my call with Katie Elliott can be taken back to source to a blog about Chip Conley over three years ago.
Oh, and in writing this, I realise that writing that one blog has resulted in no fewer than six guests (Chip, Kay, Rob, Steve, Alex, Katie) for my show. A particularly rich and unforeseen vein of connections that I had heretofore not fully recognised.
So, from that story, could you acknowledge connections more and, through that practice, first give thanks to others, then also learn something new for yourself?