The Power of Engagement Part 1 — Leading a Horse to Water
Engagement is about making people thirsty in a fair and ethical way.
We’ve all heard the old saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” I’d say most people even believe it to be true. You really can’t make a horse drink, right? This next section is about proving to you that it isn’t true. You can lead a horse to water, and you can “make” him drink. All you need do is first to lead the horse by a salt lick and let him get his fill of salt. When he’s thirsty enough, you won’t be able to keep him from drinking.
Engagement is about making people thirsty in a fair and ethical way.
We all have the gift of engagement — for example, the ability to engage ourselves and others into the possibility of living on purpose, which will be the primary focus we’ll explore here. Yet, for many of us, it’s not well-differentiated, and therefore, we have only limited access to it. So, in this series of articles (taken from my yet-to-be-published book, Path of Mastery, we’re going to create a distinction called engagement, and then you’ll have the opportunity to apply this distinction to your life.
In the process of making this distinction, we’ll look at:
• What engagement isn’t that will then lead us to,
• What engagement is as a distinction, and
• The role plays in mastering your life on purpose.
What Engagement Isn’t
Here are a few things that you might confuse as engagement and that we often see out in the world being used instead of engagement:
• Manipulation: to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s own advantage.
• Pressure: the burden of physical or mental distress
• Coercion: the use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance.
• Con an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence.
So, let me ask you. Would you rather be manipulated, pressured, coerced, conned, or would you prefer to be engaged in life?
I know, a pretty easy question to answer, even before we’ve fully distinguished what we mean by engagement.
Engagement as a Distinction
Okay, remember, a coaching distinction is a verbal lens or perspective through which we can look at ourselves and the world and in the process, see things about ourselves and the world that we might not see without the distinction.
So, what is engagement as a distinction?
Let’s start with some simple definitions:
• To attract and hold the attention of; engross
• To win over or attract
• To draw into; involve
• To require the use of; occupy
• To interlock or cause to interlock; mesh
• To involve oneself or become occupied; participate
• To become meshed or interlocked
So, in the context of living your life on purpose, being engaged means you’re ready, willing, and able to be engrossed and involved in your life, to participate in it. You are also able to attract and win over others to participate with you…and I might add, to do so without manipulation, pressure, coercion, or by conning anyone.
But let’s face it, sometimes we’re engaging, and sometimes we’re not. By distinguishing the components that make up the distinction, engagement, we can have more access to this natural, God-given talent that includes inspiration, attraction, passion, and joy.
In this series, we’ll explore in-depth a 5-part model that is intended to give us all access to the incredible gift and power of engagement. So, stay tuned.
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W. Bradford Swift has enjoyed a combo career as a writer and life coach for over thirty years and now coaches aspiring authors to write that someday, one day book TODAY. http://wbradfordswift.com/writing-coach/
