School of life

'Speak to people in a way that if they died the next day, you'd be satisfied with the last thing you said to them. I can’t emphasise this enough.’ (Bohdi Sanders)

It was a lot of fun working with a group of teenage students in Germany today. They were curious to hear a bit about my life and work in different parts of the world so I decided to create a simple wordsearch puzzle to see if they could find all 16 countries I’ve worked in, then invited them to see if they could find those countries on a large world map projected on screen. Their knowledge of geography was definitely better than mine.

Next, I introduced them to 5 different-but-related types of work that I do (coaching, mentoring, facilitation, training and consultancy). To ground the idea in practice, I gave them opportunity to try coaching me and was impressed by how quickly they grasped the principles and were able to apply them. They were curious to hear how I got involved in this type of work, so I shared a potted history of my life, calling, work and career.

Moving on, I invited the group to consider their own job and vocational hopes and aspirations for the future. I posed a list of potential ‘What matters most to me?’ values statements for them to choose from, adapt or add to (e.g. autonomy, salary, status, security, meaning, achievement, relationships) and noticed in their feedback that everyone had included ‘security’ on their list. It felt like a sign of insecure times for these young people.

In closing, I shared a simple career guidance tool (‘When do I feel most alive?’; ‘What am I naturally brilliant at?’; ‘What do I find very easy to learn?’ vs ‘When do I feel most drained of energy?’; ‘What am I absolutely terrible at?’; and ‘What do I find almost impossible to learn?’). 2 students stopped me in the corridor afterwards to ask, ‘How did you find Jesus?’ That was, for me, a personal highlight – and the most important question.