Who Do You Serve?

Building Relationships via REAL + Innovators’ Compass

REAL + Innovators’ Compass is a communication tool used to discover an innovator’s professional and personal aspirations inspired by Ela Ben Ur.

Working through the compass is an outstanding culture-building activity for teams of adults and/or students, but I wanted to break it down into smaller chunks and consider ONLY the first step. The center of the compass. 

Who Do You Serve?

1. How will this particular piece of the compass help me relate to those I serve?
2. In what ways will the responses to this question help me teach, lead, or create for my audience?
3. How might knowing the values of those I serve help develop trusting relationships?

Why this question? And, why begin in the middle of the compass?

The center of the compass is a perfect place to begin, because the people are at the heart of everything we do. As educators and innovators, we serve others, solve problems, and set out to change the world. Right?

Therefore, it’s important that we KNOW who we serve and value…AND we know who those we serve value. In case that isn’t very clear, not only do I want to create responses for this section of the compass, I also want to have my learners do the same. By knowing who they value–who they serve, I can develop new levels of empathy and better relate to them.

The responses to this question will help us make key decisions, set boundaries, create content, and ultimately build sustainable relationships.

The Center of the Compass In Action

As an administrator of instructional coaches, I used REAL + Innovators’ Compass to get to know each of them. During the conversations, a couple of the coaches answered this question, “Who do you serve?”–

Coach 1 Response: Administrators, teachers, students, my children, my husband, my Savior, my church

Coach 2 Response: mom, close friends, Casey (my brother), Katy (sister), Tyler (boyfriend), para/classified staff, parents/guardians, secretaries, students, teachers, my principal

Those responses alone tell me a lot about these two coaches. I know what they find important. One values her faith. And. the second one, family. Knowing that, I can ask about specific family members. How’s your family? Did Casey make it home safely after the holidays? 

Why is this important to the work we do?

Empathy is truly born when we show care and concern for the people and what they value. We realize that this incredible staff member or student is human. They have families. They have a lot of people they care about, and they aren’t only here to carry out a specific learning/or work task. 

Relationships can take a lot of time to develop, but discovering the answer of this question can help us better serve our learners.

Try it! 

Who do you serve? Professionally and/or personally?

Write as many things as you can down in 2 minutes.

More About the Complete Compass Process

The actual implementation of REAL + Innovators’ Compass is relatively simple. I explain it in detail in my book, Be REAL Educate from the Heart as well as in the blog linked below.

Warning– the compass might seem awkward, at first, due to the timed feature. However, when you follow the process the results will astound you. 

Typically, you’d have each student or staff member:

• fold 1 Piece of copy paper into 1/4’s 
• And, allow them to respond to each question by writing their answers on the compass.
• Give them 90 seconds per question to write as many things as they can think of

The idea of the compass was inspired by Ela Ben Ur (contact info in link blog link). I adopted her method and created a series of questions, blended with the REAL acronym, to provide a tool to better relate to the people I serve. Blog post linked HERE for the entire REAL + Innovators’ Compass process.