Finding Your Strengths: The Spinning Globe

Shared attention cannot be overstated. Covey’s 4th habit on mutual benefit really speaks to the value of this skill. Consider a globe spinning on a stand. A globe is not a globe without the stand. It is merely a beach ball.

Professionals with attentional challenges are not always the best ‘globe holders’ – holding and tracking projects (follow thru and follow up). Consider outsourcing this type of attention to others.

Finding Your Strengths

Often Global Creatives are better globe spinners – looking at things in a different way, with a different form of attention.  This is where Win/Win can be so beneficial where a group energy sustains ‘holding attention’ for a Global Creative. This frees us up to focus on creative attention, to look at projects from different perspectives, and develop creative outcomes. In addition, shared attention allows the professional with ADHD to put their energy and focus towards a key area, and move the project to a completion point.  Harnessing our own assets starts with effective delineation of roles and trusting that the time will be well spent.  As a truly creative form of work, 'globe spinning' will never respond to urgency.

Locating competent globe holders is not always easy. Not only must they track and hold projects, they must see the inherent value the Global Creative brings to the collaborative effort.

My clients joke about hiring admin support, often hiring like minded ‘P’s (Myers Briggs), when in reality it behooves them and their projects - globes -  to hire a good globe holder – a ‘J’ - instead. When we don’t have the option to hire this work out, then identifying collaborators with this capacity is a good idea. Lastly, we can do this ourselves with the help of project management software and our own systems.

Teaching two consecutive coach training classes and supporting a third, I am certainly getting good exercise in both holding and spinning globes, but I have also enlisted the support of key individuals to help hold these important globes. That way, I can take the time to just spin them and develop quality products I feel good about.