What Does It Take to Change Someone's World?

I had a science teacher who said that if you could speak directly to one cell in an organ in your body, you could never convince that cell that they were merely one cell, and together with 100 trillion cells, they made up one human on a planet with 8 billion humans and that this planet is only one of an unknown number of planets...?

How could a single cell understand both its significance and insignificance at the same time??

I had a funny experience several years ago.

I was mentoring a more junior learning professional, and he was newly part of a graduate program.?

I met with him and talked about my philosophies, the tools I use, the things I can’t live without, and the reasons why I love this profession.?

He called me up a week later.

He had been to his orientation in his new program, and one of the speakers worked at the same company that I did.

The speaker spoke about a Learning Leader at his company who had changed his life and really showed him what was possible with learning.

This information changed how he operated within his whole part of the Business.?

My mentee told me that he went up to this speaker during the session break and told him that his mentor worked at the same company as the speaker.

When my mentee told the speaker my name, the speaker’s face lit up, and he said:

"That’s her! She is the person I was talking about in the example of why learning is so important in organizations!”

Now the funny thing is that when my mentee told me about this, I had to look up the person's name in my company’s directory.?

I then had to go to my notes and find the project he must have been referencing.?

I had completely forgotten about it.?

The reason the story makes me laugh... is so often...

we have no idea how we change the people we come into contact with.?

We don’t realize the significance of what we think is insignificant.

I know many of the people who have inspired me, driven me to success, showed me when it was time to give up, and impacted me in monumental ways, probably don’t even remember our interactions.?

When I interacted with my colleague on that project, I was only doing my job.?

I am lucky. It is a job I enjoy, and I am perfectly suited for it.?

I had no awareness of the larger impact that I had on one employee in a department,?

one department within a division,?

one division within a location,?

one location within a country,?

one country within a continent,?

one continent within our operations across multiple continents.?

I was like that single cell, not realizing the larger organ and the human it was a part of.?

When my colleague shared what I taught him at the university, my mentee became one cell that would bring that knowledge to another organization, as would the other grad students there.?

By changing a person we may change a world and by changing a world we may change a person.?

Sometimes we only change the world for that person...

but that can make all the difference in the world.

What will you intentionally cultivate for growth?

What will you share with the world?

What will you try to learn and pass on to feed the cycle?