The Serendipity Strategy: People First Andrew Petty is Dying

Serendipity. According to the Oxford Languages Dictionary, “serendipity” is “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.” 
What if it was possible to harness the power of serendipity rather than leave it all up to chance? 
 
Finding Serendipity in Our Own Story
If we’re honest, many of the most pivotal moments of our lives are unscripted, unplanned, and unforeseen. Even if those moments exist within the context of a plan we conceived, they are never just the result of the linear unfolding of that plan according to our conscious input at every turn. 
If we’re honest, the most pivotal moments rarely appear pivotal at the moment. We only see their significance clearly with the benefit of hindsight. We see in hindsight how one moment led to another and another and another, and how each of those moments led to THIS one. 
They are what we call moments of serendipity. 
Most importantly, if we’re honest, many of our most pivotal moments of serendipity include the unique and often unsolicited contributions of other people. 
We know this to be true in movies and books. The main character encounters other characters, and that encounter alters the course of the main character’s journey. Of course the main character does things on their own that alter the course of their story, and mishaps befall them that don’t involve other people. But the storyline is influenced and advanced most profoundly because of the main characters’ interaction with other characters.
We often fail to see that the same is true in our own Story. 
 
Serendipity in My Story
In the early 2000s–2003 to be exact, I think–I was in a season of profound personal and professional dissatisfaction and confusion. My parents were in the loop on my condition. Unsolicited, they gave me the opportunity to take an assessment called the Natural Ability Battery–a key tool I use in the work I do with 1-1 coaching clients today–so I could better understand the innate abilities that I could bring to the table in life. I took the assessment, and the results were enlightening, but I didn’t have the will or the wherewithal to operationalize the results in my life at that point. I didn’t yet have the ears to hear. 
Fast forward to 2011 or thereabouts, and I was in another season of personal and professional dissatisfaction and confusion. Desperate for insights that would help me get unstuck, I dusted off my Natural Ability Battery report. But I needed a refresher on how to use the results, so I called Leslie, who first administered and interpreted the assessment for me back in 2003. I got the refresher I needed, but I got much more than that. 
Unsolicited, Leslie offered to introduce me to her husband, Matt, who was a coach with a particular interest in young men like me–i.e. young men in ministry and in formation. Long-story short, Matt became my first coach. That partnership transformed my confidence and competency at home and at work, guided me through the difficult years surrounding our senior leader’s departure, and helped me and my wife Charis summon the clarity and courage to close that chapter back East and start writing a new one here in Colorado in 2014. 
Fast forward a couple more years and a lot of water under the bridge, I had decided to give this coaching thing a go–-based in no small part on my experience of being coached but also on my deepening insight about the kind of human I am and the kind of work I’m meant to do in the world. Coaching seemed like a good fit. 
I cast a pretty wide net at first, coaching just about anybody and everybody who was willing to be a guinea pig. Thankfully, no guinea pigs weren’t harmed in the making of this coach. 
Then, again unsolicited,Leslie called to ask if I was interested in doing some leadership development work with a consulting company she’d been involved with for many years. She thought I’d be a good fit for the work,