Last week I had the pleasure of working with a group of leaders in a country town – a vibrant community in Australia’s glorious Hunter Valley whose livelihood depends mostly on the mining, wine and tourism industries. Each person in the workshop is actively involved in community service, their energy, optimism and commitment to service is inspirational.
We were discussing the attitudes of “locals” to “blow-ins” (i.e. people who reside in the town who were actually born there, as were their parents and grandparents before them) versus those who had come from outside – the “transients”. Despite having settled there, building homes, having children and sending them to the local schools (some of these people have been in the community for more than twenty years) they are still just “blow-ins”. Interestingly enough, these very same people were the majority on the boards of the local service organisations, the ones who give generously of their time and expertise to ensure that there is a prosperous future for their children (and all the children in the town). One of my participants shared the story of having a “local who was born there” explain to him very seriously that he couldn’t consider himself a “real local” unless he was here for the 1955 flood!
As I drove the few hundred kilometres home, I couldn’t help but reflect on how these ingrained attitudes, whilst appearing to be said lightheartedly, perhaps even delivered with the good old friendly Aussie back-slap, continue to separate and divide. In our organisations, how often do we diminish and ignore fresh ideas when they come from “newbies”? In our lives, how often do we reject “new wisdom” because “you just don’t know what it’s really like – you haven’t been here long enough!”
In a workshop the following day (same company) a talented young man dismissed his opinion by saying, “… but I’m just a trainee”. I challenged the use of the word just… after all, what better place to view an organisation from than that of an enthusiastic new “trainee” - keen to learn everything about his new role, thrilled to have been considered for a position straight out of school, and filled with a passion for possibility that hasn’t yet felt the sting of rejection often enough to stop putting forth his ideas. Then, it gave me an excuse to refer to the delicious Johnny Depp in “Finding Neverland” - the scene where he dances with his dog, Porthos, explaining that he is a dancing bear in the circus. Little Peter dismisses the act by saying,
“That’s absurd. He’s just a dog”… and in his most gorgeous accent, Johnny Depp stops horrified….”just a dog? Porthos dreams of being a bear, and you want to shatter those dreams by saying he’s “just” a dog? What a horrible candle-snuffing word. That’s like saying, “He can’t climb that mountain, he’s just a man”, or “That’s not a diamond, it’s just a rock.”
Just.
