This International Working Out Loud week the theme is ‘Deepen Relationships and Create A Legacy’. This week practioners around the world have been exploring how Working Out Loud helps them to create lasting impact.

This we we have explored why relationships matter in our work, how Working Out Loud deepens relationships, the opportunity to create a legacy every day and actions to start that work using Working Out Loud.

Show Possibility

The greatest feedback I receive is when someone suggests to me that an interaction we had or an idea I shared helped them to change their life.  There is one consistent theme in this feedback. It is that our interaction showed the other person a possibility that they could not see before.  That possibility may have been my confidence in them, an example to follow, a career option, a way of tackling a problem, a new path or just a practice that they found useful.  We can change the lives of others by showing them possibilities that they can’t yet see for themselves.

Working Out Loud is a fabulous way to show others a possibility. There is nothing more powerful than demonstrating what can be done and how it can be done.  Remember working out loud is not just open work.  Bryce William’s original definition also included narrating the work so that others can learn from the example and understand the process that is being taken.  By working out loud you can start every day to show others ways that may be new to them.  This legacy may not even require you to know the others. They might just watch from afar.

Working out loud can also generate the opportunity for you to engage others to show them a new possibility in conversation. When people are aware of your goals, work and capabilities and you have demonstrated your openness to share, it is easier for others to approach you to help.

Create A Coaching & Learning Culture 

As people in your networks and organisations help each other to see new possibilities you are starting to create a coaching and learning culture. A cadre of people who consistently work out loud will have a significant impact shifting the culture of your network in this direction. Telling people what to do is one thing. Creating an environment where everyone shows how to do it and engages to support the achievement of others is critical to success in the rapid pace of a digital economy.

Working out loud can create a new awareness of the mutual interdependence of our work, of the reciprocal benefits of helping others and importantly play a key role in fostering the kinds of coaching interactions that accelerate learning. If people in your organisation or networks are seeking to understand the goals and the work of others, sharing their insights and expertise and consistently creating new possibilities for action for others then it is an incredibly rich and purposeful place to be.

Create a Legacy of Legacies

WOLWeek grows each year because of the active and public example of all the practitioners who join in to share their work. Those individuals are creating new legacies through their actions.  Importantly their work itself enables others to begin to work out loud, deepen relationships and create a legacy.  The power of working out loud is to create a legacy of manifold legacies. Now that is work to keep us engaged until the next working out loud week.

Thanks to all those who have supported International Working Out Loud week this week.  Thanks in particular to our regular sponsor Change Agents Worldwide and to their active community of WOL practitioners, gurus and advisors.