Day #784 - Travelling Not Far From Home
Depth of Travel
On the airport bus I spoke to a couple of ladies who were over from America for a cruise around Northern Europe. We bonded over the challenge of remaining upright as the bus lurched and swayed, but fortunately we were so tightly packed in that a fall seemed unlikely.
They were excited to see Amsterdam, Oslo, and then to visit Iceland on their way home. It sounds like quite a trip.
Sometimes we travel far to find something new, but at other times we can travel whilst barely moving.
Our Social Context is fluid and contextual, and unique to ourselves. Like right now, I’m sat in the airport cafe, writing to you, but surrounded by couples and individuals each wrapped up in their own worlds. Some chatting energetically, others tired, silent.
We can travel not only in space, but in ideas, in identities, in realities. We can borrow, glimpse, or inhabit, other peoples contexts, even if only for a few minutes.
We can see the local anew: our communities, but also our teams and peers, as well as the host of people who inhabit the same Organisation as us, but whom we simply never ‘see’.
This is Social Leadership as Motion: to travel not far, but in depth, and through others. To forge new conversations, to hear variations of ideas, to borrow different lenses. And not simply those we enjoy, but also those of difference and dissent, if we can maintain common respect.
Use your sixty seconds today to consider where you can travel, as close to where you stand as possible.
We are richer when we travel, but we do not have to move our feet far to become wonderfully far from home.
