23 Apr When Helping Starts to Sound Like Steering
It was early on a Tuesday morning, and I was driving to the airport for a 9 a.m. flight.
I’ve been enough times that I don’t need directions, but since it was rush hour, I turned Google Maps on to see how traffic was moving. The freeway looked like the best option based on the timing.
A few miles in, it suggested getting off much earlier than I expected.
I frowned, thinking I know this route, I know how to get to the airport from here.
I stayed on.
As I passed the exit it had suggested, I heard the familiar voice: “Rerouting.”
A mile later, traffic came to a standstill. A car was stalled in the middle lane, and traffic began that slow, messy dance around it. Google Maps offered another path, a blue line curving off the freeway to avoid the delay.
I glanced at the time. I wasn’t in a rush.
I stayed where I was. Again, the voice echoed through the car: “Rerouting.”
Each time, Google Maps simply adjusted, meeting me exactly where I was and offering another way forward.
I’ve been thinking about that voice.
How gentle and calm it is. How it doesn’t react when you don’t follow it, just continues, offering guidance for you to consider.
How different that sounds from the voice we often hear in ourselves when we’re trying to help someone move toward change.
When we see a step that feels important and someone doesn’t take it, something in our voice changes. A flicker of frustration, maybe, or disappointment. It comes from a place of caring, and from the sense that we should help move things along. So we try again, a little more clearly, until what began as an offer starts to sound more like instruction.
A bit of urgency creeps in, and with it a return to the belief that helping means getting someone to go the way we think they should.
Google Maps doesn’t take the wheel or try to steer. It stays alongside, offering guidance. You don’t want to go that way? Okay. I’ll meet you here instead and offer another path. And another, if you need it.
Always oriented toward the destination, never losing sight of whose choice it is.
That way of helping is harder than it looks.
It asks for a kind of humility. To let go of being right, or being the most efficient, or getting someone there the way you think is best. To notice the tendency to fix and intervene, and soften it.
When it comes to personal change, we’re not in the driver’s seat.
At best, we’re in the passenger seat. And sometimes, if we’re honest, we’re more like a toddler in the back, hands on a small plastic steering wheel, convinced we’re the ones moving things along.
Maybe it’s about learning to sound a little more like that voice.
To stay alongside.
To offer another way to consider.
And to trust that people can find their way, even if it doesn’t look the way we would have chosen.