Damn! Damn! Damn!
Let me preface this by saying that I get a big kick out of working with young people who have a real desire to make something of themselves … to have a go (a good Australian colloqualism) … to break out of the teenage mould and dare to face challenges. And I’ve done quite a bit of work with kids like that over the years and over the years I have seen some brilliant kids face their fears, overcome them and take big steps forward in their personal development.
So when a young person asks me for help I’m rarely say no. Wednesday was a day like that. A young guy from one of the local high schools asked me to look over a busy plan he had to put together for a school assignment.
Not a problem, I could do that so I picked it up this morning and brought it home to read. That was when I found that I had to more than just ‘look it over’. I had to answer 10 questions and the answers were basically a critique of the business plan.
Basically the business plan was a dream … a vision of world of business that simply does not exist … and a dream that would never fly in the real world.
The questions gave me very little room for some creative tap-dancing so what do I do? Do I give answers that are in alignment with the real world or do I step into his dream world and tell him that it’s a wonderful business plan?
When I need to find answers to questions like that I tend to pace … and Toni knows just to let me go.
I don’t know what you would have done but in the end I came down on the side of telling it like it really is.
I’ve returned the business plan now with the questions answered and he probably regrets asking me to critique it because now it goes on to the teacher for marking. But I couldn’t handle the fact that if I had joined him in his dream then one day he might have tried to go into business for himself based on something that I had said that was less than honest.
But somehow I just feel that I’ve let him down.
