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Go Beyond Grand Gestures

We live in an age of grand gestures. They’re all around us, a mile wide and an inch deep.


They don’t require forethought or deliberation. Grand gestures fulfill their potential simply by being offered. A sweeping statement. An AI-generated image. A gratuitous compliment. They are seemingly magnanimous…noble…jaw-dropping…provocative…yet devoid of deeper meaning.


One size fits all…but differently…because we each respond to grand gestures based on our own expectations and understandings. Are you pro-something? Then this grand gesture is for you! Anti-something? The same gesture confirms your beliefs! With their hard-to-nail-down ambiguity, we are free to fill in the blanks to suit ourselves. Grand gestures pander to our most base instincts. They pad our comfort zone. We feel less pressure to change or grow.


You see them everywhere: feel-good memes, attention-getting sound bites, coy dog whistles and cynical tropes. We cheer, jeer, resist, protest, laugh, cry, poke, prod, celebrate, negate and gloat in self-fulfilling reaffirmation of our biases. Since they require no effort, they yield no results.


Grand gestures address anything, everything and nothing all at once. They require no effort to look beyond our own inference. They reinforce our personal beliefs and passions, giving us license to be lazy…listening for what we want to hear…reinforcing our reality. “I’m right, I know I’m right, and since I’m right I know I’m not wrong, so don’t burst my bubble!” Mindless, feel-good free-floating bubbles, rising like easy answers…seemingly ascertainable…but ultimately endlessly elusive…


It can be very comfortable in the age of grand gestures, making it harder to effect change…in business…in education…in the community…in our selves. To overcome this easy answer allure, we need to push beyond feeling and believing, digging deeper…to watching, asking and seeking out facts…keeping us grounded in the work at hand. And the work begins within each of us. We can't effectively evolve education if we haven't evolved ourselves.


The solution? Deeper thinking and self-work are the bubble-popping antidote. Administer by asking:

  • Why does it appeal to me?

  • What response does it seek to elicit?

  • Does my response move me forward, or hold me back?  


Grand gestures are easy. Grand actions are hard. Do what is best for you.



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Learn more, view testimonials, and join us here.


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