October 5
A Different Way Works
The job is done, and it is done well. There is only one difficulty: the person handled it differently from the way we showed them. We can feel the correction forming before we know what needs correcting. Perhaps our method was good. Perhaps it was simply familiar, and seeing another method succeed makes our own place feel a little less secure.
Trust includes room for another person's judgment to become visible. If every difference requires a defense, our praise for initiative will eventually sound hollow. We can ask about their thinking with real curiosity and learn something about the work ourselves. There may be a practical problem worth raising, but it helps to know whether we are discussing results or our attachment to being the example. Another person's competence need not reduce the value of what we taught them. It may be part of what that teaching made possible.
What am I protecting when a successful difference still bothers me?
Their method deserves to be considered on its own merits.
For the A.A. nerds: Twelve Concepts for World Service, Concepts II and III.