Meghan M. Biro, in her Forbes column, advocates reverse mentoring, a method I believe spurs serendipitous discovery of unexpected shared sweet spots of mutual interest, as well as shared social learning.
Biro cites my former colleague at the Center for the Edge, John Hagel. “Formal schooling and degrees give workers about five years’ worth of useable skills,” according to Hagel and others at Harvard Business Review.
Staying open to serendipitous introductions increases the chances you’ll cultivate a flexible mindset, recognizing more sides to a situation and discover more breakthroughs in your areas of strongest interest.
Plus you’ll open more doors to unexpected happenings in the adventure story you are truly meant to live, with others.
What Makes Click Moments Different From Other Ways of Finding Connections and Ideas?
Recognize click moments in three ways, according to Johansson:
- They tend to occur when two separate concepts, ideas or people meet.
- They are impossible to predict as to when, how or where they will happen.
- You may recognize them because they often evoke emotional responses “such as happiness, awe or excitement.”
See If You’re a Savvy Serendipity Seeker
If you score above a 36 in the workplace serendipity quiz, you are more likely to be able to lead innovative teams, to“cultivate innovation” and to prosper, according to Earning Serendipity author Glenn Llopis.
Tip: One of the four practices Llopis advocates reflects a mutuality mindset: “Sharing the harvest: Focus on meeting others’ needs to improve personal good fortune.”
Your post was enough to send me out looking for Llopis’s book. Here’s one other point: one must pay attention and seek moments that, at face value, seem unrelated. Who could guess that responding to an email from a blog post would put me in a position to help a CEO find an executive coach.
The second thought is that “sharing the harvest” might mean taking an action that serves the other, not necessarily yourself.
Sure, I wanted the CEO to select me as an executive coach but–after looking at his situation– I realized that a strong male with a sense of compassion and a belief in the triple bottom line, would be easier to cut through the all-male team. I think I might have just created a new friend AND… one can never tell where it will lead.
Eileeen — I agree with both of your thoughtful points and can see why audiences respond so well as a coach and speaker