Newsletter Eleven - April to September 2020

A new start?

As for many of you, this has been a half-year of major upheaval.

  • I'm writing from our new home in Portugal.
  • We lost my beloved father-in-law, John.
  • My job has changed profoundly.
  • There is even more than usual to be grateful for.

I'm glad of this opportunity to pause and take stock.  Thanks for joining me.

Highlights

Usually, one of the easiest things about pulling this newsletter together is choosing the photos. This time they all look the same! Life on Zoom has a different kind of intensity. Happily, it has FELT as diverse and engaging as ever; just different.

Even though lockdown had begun when I wrote my last newsletter, I hadn’t understood quite how much of my work would dissolve. Most of it did. The main highlight of this six months has been shifting from mainly groupwork, to mainly one-to-one (mind you, it’s a relief that I love it, because I wouldn’t have had any choice).

In May I started working for BetterUp, one of the world’s largest executive coaching companies. They are digital by design, not scrambling to adapt to operating online. They are truly global, with 800 bases in 32 languages. The people I’ve worked with there are different from my usual clientele, and I’ve enjoyed having to adjust to fit. Several new private clients have emerged too, mainly by word of mouth.

I’ve run four sizeable online events: two reflection half-days, a week-long China refresher course (China’s domestic version of Zoom took some adjusting to, as did the 8-hour time difference, but it was definitely worth all the late finishes), and a three-day strategic meeting for an order of Sisters.

What I hadn’t expected was how key the pre-work design conversations would be: the events themselves were great, but some of the best feedback was how heartening and useful the pre-work was for the teams (not to mention huge fun!). 

Sourcing consoling poems for my YouTube channel kept me refreshed through lockdown.

This encouraging response popped up on the final post:

“Thanks for this series of poems, Sarah. I have found them consoling, challenging and life-affirming. We have used them across our school network here in Australia to encourage reflection during this Covid-19 time. Some of them are being used in return-to-work reflective processes. Looking forward to the next series.”

Milestones

  1. Somatic Coaching training. I devoted a lot of attention from April to August completing an intensive course called “The Power of Embodied Transformation”. It might seem the ultimate irony to do embodiment training entirely online. However, learning this way of tuning profoundly into one’s felt experience through lockdown and the early stages of COVID19 was utterly timely. I paired up with a colleague and friend for the whole course, and we accompanied each other; through lockdown, visa crises, both of us swapping countries, grief, George Floyd and everything else that unfolded. I’m eternally grateful to Yumi, whose partnership and joint accountability increased the impact of the course hugely for me.  
  2. Stepping away. My weak ‘No’ muscles have come up in this newsletter before. They’ve grown over the last three months. I’ve left three big ongoing pieces of work and four smaller ones, mostly training-related. That feels risky, but stepping away from things I probably should never have said ‘Yes’ to feels necessary. There has been some pain in this, and I’ve upset some people. But my head feels clearer, and there’s a sense of relief and freshness that makes me sure it’s right. 

What I'm learning

What’s possible online. It’s easier to maintain rapport than to build it from scratch online. Conversely though, some people find the distance that digital media gives them can make it easier to open up, or bare their soul.

Zoom is easier to use badly than well. It reminds me of the early days of websites, when people just transferred their paper content online, as if the internet was merely an on-screen filing cabinet. If you do use it engagingly, giving people lots of space to reflect, chat in small groups, and use their imagination with images and stories, your event glows disproportionately in contrast to the many dull, flat two-dimensional ‘talk-ats’ that people have had to sit through. I’ve had outrageously glowing feedback for some rather amateurish Zoom events, just because they were engaging.

The many faces of coaching. Some of my coaching packages have been concentrated short bursts; the intensity serves some stages of life or career well. But with others, we meet only 4-6 times a year, and that offers a very different kind of support and perspective. Whether it’s sustained leadership support, rapid exponential growth, accountability, tools and techniques to operate more skilfully, nurturing mental health, or emergency triage in crises, coaching offers expansive safe space, fresh perspectives and new, open questions that help to make more possible.

What's next?

My big face-to-face event for this winter has been postponed again. The only other trip, a February meeting in Rome, is very unlikely to happen face-to-face. So the coming months will be mainly coaching, supervision and online retreats.

We are both settling in to our new home and life in Portugal, and enjoying balancing online careers with far more time out on our bikes, getting healthier and generally being out in nature and by the ocean. So much to be grateful for…

Thank you for reading!