As I get to day 6 of this trip, I start wondering if I am getting repetitive. The power of one, working in partnership, change is good, and dreaming is important. After my day at the Santa Luisa de Marilac school, I could speak about any of these, and they would all hold true. Yet today, one more virtue stands out – the power of patience.
Development work is a long-term game
Let’s face it, inter-generational change takes a long time. By definition, more than a generation. And that is the game we are playing. Whilst we alleviate poverty today by giving children food and sending them to school, the real goal is to ensure the children of our children will no longer need us.
With all the starts and stops, drop-outs here, pregnancies there, it takes a great degree of patience to persevere with the belief that there will be success at the end of the journey.
“The success will not be 100%. In fact, it will be much less than that, but the lives you do change, you change effectively for good.”
The key metric will be efficacy rather than just efficiency. Whilst we can’t help but measure both, it is the long-term sustainable change that we are looking for.
Patient conversations
Earlier today, we sat down as a team at the school. You follow the protocol, the local coordinator opens, then our country coordinator, then me. After that, I invite people to contribute and speak, and I just wait. You need to go through moments of silence and resist jumping to conclusions. You also don’t need to repeat your request and urge people to speak. They heard you the first time around. Thank goodness for the short coaching course I did once and the 7-second rule. In some of our teams here, it is more likely the 3-minute rule.
I find this format is driven by a careful choice of words (not so usual in many of my daily interactions back home) aligned with ingrained cultural norms that I don’t always understand. Even when someone starts speaking, they will take their time greeting everyone, thanking other people for their interventions or team mates for their work. When you finally think they are done and really have nothing more to say, that is when the meaningful conversation begins.
I have also learned that I don’t get to reply to each person on the spot. You let everyone speak first. Part is protocol, but from my perspective, it forces me to absorb each message until the end, note it and then only respond when everyone is finished with the points that truly matter and in a succinct, clear manner. Patience is the name of the game again.
Time requires patience
Beyond these conversations, patience also plays out over time — in the work itself, in the lives we touch, and in the results we wait for.
When faced with different shapes of challenges along the way, we are tempted to keep changing course. As much as I am an advocate for flexibility and learning from mistakes, I have also learned that you can’t jump to conclusions as fast as one would hope for in our Western daily lives.
“Working on the ground requires patience to truly get to the source of the issues, let successes emerge even when it feels otherwise.”
You need to take time to sit down with the team, the families, and the child. And then do it again a few more times. Conversations don’t solve an issue on the first attempt. They are not meant to. After all, you are merely trying to assess the situation. Only after a few attempts can you move into problem-solving, or rather, solutions-testing. You need time to see the results of your actions. And patience.
I often tell my children that they need to be more patient. They don’t buy that patience is truly a skill. Coming here, I am reminded that my own patience can go a long way still. Whilst I learned not to interrupt and almost always to follow protocol, I have also learned that this same protocol is there to provide us with a structure for active listening and thoughtful responses.
The power of patience reminds us that deep change takes time. That is the true shape of development work, one that seeks deep solutions rather than quick-fixes, one that takes time to get to know reality and one that adjusts but is patient to assess outcomes. We could all use a little bit more of this style in our lives.