Open Sesame or Knock and you the door will open

Paul Johnstone
At a recent Refer-On meeting I saw what I call the Key ring motive to getting advocates to work for you.

As a concept, most people understand the idea of Advocating for people.

If you are in a room of 20 people, simply ask everyone to take out their keys.

Take a look around and find who has the most keys on their key-ring.

Then take that key ring. You say to the roomful of people: "There are 20 people in this room. Would you agree that there are more keys than people?"

After everyone agrees, you pick up one key from the key ring you borrowed and ask, "Can anybody tell me what door this key can open?"

When most everyone shakes their head, you say, "The only person who can give me the right answer is hopefully the person I borrowed the keys from."

This simple tale demonstrates that advocating is really about opening doors for one another. Your job as an advocate is to tell us which doors you would like us to open for you; our job is to look at our keys and see if we have the right key to open that door.

It's All about Trust

You have the key, now find out if the person who gave it to you and trusted you with it. Turn to them and ask, "Can I take the keys with me?"

The person usually refuses. How do they know you are trustworthy? Trust is the key that unlocks the door.

This is the second stage of Advocacy:

Developing trust. In any relationship, someone may give up their home key or office key. But without that trust, we hold on tightly to the key, and miss out on an open door.

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