The theme of the recent TEDWomen 2021 conference in Palm Springs was “What Now?”—a question many of us are asking these days. While there is of course no simple answer, one thing all 48 speakers agreed on was the need for people to take action. As Bobbie LaPorte explains in her December 6 “Your Best Next Move” video, your personal agency is a gift worth giving—and it’s never been more needed than it is now.
Transcript of Your Best Next Move: Your Power of Agency is a Gift Worth Spreading
Hi everyone, Bobbie LaPorte here again with my weekly tip for your Best Next Move – where I help you have more agency in your work, acknowledge your capacity to act and see what you can do right now.
For the last 12 months, I’ve been dedicating these weekly tips to how you can use your personal power of agency to act – to move your personal and professional agendas ahead.
If you’ve been following my LI posts this past week, you might know that I spent three days at the annual TEDWomen Conference in Palm Springs. The theme of this year’s conference was aptly “What Now” – recognizing that we still have real challenges ahead in health, work, play, the environment, innovation and all kinds of human relations.
All of the 48 speakers urged us, in some way, to act on the issue or topic they represented – which spanned the entire political spectrum.
And while I may not have agreed with all of them or their messages, they did make me think. After all, that is what TED is all about: “Ideas Worth Spreading.”
It made me realize that, after 19 months of semi-isolation, we have learned through the pandemic that we are more interconnected that ever before, more reliant on each other then ever before, more in need of human contact than ever before.
And it doesn’t take much for you to help “spread” your personal agency and have impact. We know from research that small acts can create widespread change. They have enormous power, an influence disproportionate to the acts themselves.
Once you act, forces are set in motion that favor another act, and that can fuel transformative change by leveraging tiny impacts into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach.
Your personal agency and ability to act was never needed more than it is now.
So, here’s my tip for spreading the gift of your personal agency:
Consider how you can use your agency in your daily life. Support a colleague at work; get engaged in your kid’s schooling or activities; connect with a neighbor. It may sound trite, but even the smallest intentional act can make a big difference for someone, for all of us.
That’s my tip for this week. I’ll see you next week, which will be my last vlog of 2021. I’ll be taking a hiatus until after the New Year.
Take care of yourselves.